


The Raptor's Ransom

by DisaLanglois



Series: Raptors in the Rainforest [2]
Category: Jurassic Park (Movies), Jurassic World (2015)
Genre: Animal Intelligence, Colombia - Freeform, Complete, Crimes & Criminals, Dinosaurs, Gen, Genetically Engineered Beings, Intelligent dinosaurs, Original Villains, Pack Bonding, People get chomped, Post-Jurassic World, Strike Back - Freeform, Symbiotic Relationship, Velociraptors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-07 16:06:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 55,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5462702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DisaLanglois/pseuds/DisaLanglois
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>In hindsight, kidnapping the human partner of the alpha velociraptor would turn out to be a very flawed decision...</em>  </p><p>It has been a year since Owen Grady stole his own velociraptors back from InGen, and disappeared with them into the night.  Since then, Owen has been living with the raptor pack, deep in the Amazon rainforest, learning the mysteries of velociraptor society.  </p><p>But with creatures as intelligent and complex as velociraptors, nothing ever stays the same for long.  Owen is starting to wonder whether he really has a place in the raptor pack – or if his idyllic life is about to come crashing to an end.  </p><p>When a group of strangers arrives in the rainforest, it seems that the outside world is about to collide with the small secret world of the velociraptors.  Owen will have to fight to preserve everything he cares about – but first of all, he will have to survive ... </p><p> Sequel to Raptor Raptor Burning Bright. Now complete!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trying not to write massive spoilers for Part 1 in the summary for Part 2 is _really hard._ This story follows directly from Raptor Raptor Burning Bright, if you are reading this and wondering where all these other raptors came from. 
> 
> Cross-over with Strike Back, but only if you look really close.

The young woman gazed into the video camera. Her dark wavy hair was bundled back from her face in a bright scarf. Her grey eyes were bright and confident.

“We’re now entering one of the wildest parts of Colombia. This road we’re on now is one of the very few roads running into the rainforest, and as you can see, it’s not much of a road,” she confided into the camera, as if she was speaking to intimate friends on the other side of the lens.

Around her, framed by the viewfinder, the vehicle was rocking wildly. Not because they were driving at speed, but because the 4x4 was labouring over deep muddy ruts.

“But we’re lucky to have got this far at all. We’re coming up now on the little town of San Judas Tadeo, which saw some really hard fighting during La Violencia. Just a few years ago, this whole area was a no-go zone for journalists, and we’re one of the first film crews to come out here without a squad of bodyguards.”

She paused to scrape a lock of dark hair back from her eyes. The bracelets and beads on her wrist jangled cheerfully.

“We’re really going out onto the edge of the known world out here, and we’re really excited about what we might find. If what we’re looking for really _is_ out here, then this is where we’ve got the best shot of finding them. People here have been talking about monsters in the night for years. We might even find someone in San Judas Tadeo who’s actually seen one.”

She turned her head to look out of the window, as if expecting to see her quarry step out of the foliage right alongside the car. “They’re so close, I can almost smell them…”

She looked out of the window for a moment, and then said, in a different tone of voice, “Okay, Roy, cut it.”

“Got it,” Roy said. Roy was sitting scrunched on the other side of the seat, his long legs doubled-up under him in the small space of the 4x4. He stopped recording, and lowered the TV camera. It was not a bulky film-set camera, but a smaller shoulder-held digital camera, handy for shooting documentaries like theirs. Roy was learning to be his own sound-man, because their original sound-man had bailed out in Bogota as soon as he heard where they were going.

“ _You_ might be excited, love,” Roy said, staring down at his camera. His hair was iron-grey, and his accent was English, and crisp. “But that’s not the word I think I would use.”

“Don’t stress, Roy! This is all in a day’s work!” Maggie said. “We’re cool. We’re cool, aren’t we, Matteo?”

“He is right, _Señorita_ Montroe,” their driver said. He looked over his shoulder to where the two film crew were sitting in the back seat. “This place is not safe. La Leona owns all this land. She probably already knows we are here…”

“La Leona?” Maggie asked. “The Lioness?”

“Emilia Gomez,” Matteo said. “The sister of the Jaguar. British soldiers came here, and killed both of her brothers, and now Emilia rules the Gomez cartel by herself.”

“Colombian drug cartels,” Roy said. “Wonderful.”

“I’m not scared of the Gomez cartel,” Maggie insisted.“The dinosaurs are _here,_ Roy.”

“ _If_ they’re anywhere,” Roy added. “ _If_ they’re not just an urban legend, like the Mapinguari, or La Patasola.”

“They’re out here,” Maggie insisted. “There have been stories about them for twenty years – that’s too long for them not to be real.”

“And for how many years have the Scots been telling stories about their Loch Ness Monster?” Roy pointed out.   “Stories don’t mean anything.”

It was an old argument, and despite his doubts Roy had agreed to join her expedition anyway as her cameraman. The rumours about dinosaurs in the rainforest had persisted for twenty years, and they’d been kicked awake again after the Jurassic World disaster last year. The History Channel people had searched all over Central America for their ‘Jurassic Bigfoot,’ but they found nothing. Maggie was going to succeed where everyone else had failed, by looking where no-one else had looked. She knew it. She was sure of it. 

Maggie reached into her pocket, and took out their main evidence, so that she could look at it again for reassurance.

It was a small black stone. It was glossy and hard, and all its sharp edges had been polished smooth, like a gemstone. Stones like this were dug up occasionally in fossil beds, all over the world. Palaeontologists called them gastroliths, or ‘stomach stones.’ It was thought that dinosaurs, like some birds, needed to swallow stones to help them with their digestion.

But _this_ gastrolith had not been dug up from an old bone-bed. _This_ one had been picked up next to a dirt road, right here in Amazonas Department, just a few months ago. An expert from the university in Bogota agreed that it might have come from a velociraptor. It was tangible proof: velociraptors in the rainforest of Colombia.

Maggie had formed her search around this little stone, although the editing room would decide how much it would feature in the film’s final cut. She’d taken to carrying the stone around in her pocket, like a talisman.

The dinosaurs _were_ out here. She could feel it. Her instincts had been honed in a dozen warzones around the world, and they hadn’t faded just because she had moved on to a different field of journalism. They were out here, and she would find them.

She’d started her search where everyone started when they wanted to talk about dinosaurs. She went to Jurassic World, and got an interview with Claire Dearing. The Ice Queen of Isla Nublar was very happy to talk about the reopening of Jurassic World – right up until the moment Maggie mentioned the word ‘velociraptors.’   Dearing froze up faster than a Sudanese politician asked about the Janjaweed. _No comment, no comment, no comment…_

It had been frustrating, but it had also been informative. Claire Dearing was lying through her elegant corporate teeth, and Maggie knew it. Dearing knew something about velociraptors, and she was trying to protect the secret. Something _had_ survived … Jurassic Park’s final secret.

And this small black stone in Maggie’s palm was proof. This stone had come from a dinosaur – not 65 million years ago, but six months ago. There _were_ velociraptors out here...

“You keep looking at that thing, as if it’s going to tell you something,” Roy said, breaking into her thoughts.

Maggie realized she had been staring at the shiny stone. She closed her fist around it. “They’re out here,” she said.

“Perhaps, perhaps not.”

“They are!” she insisted. “They’re so close, I can smell them. There are just too many stories, too many coincidences, to be just …

“Hullo!” Roy interrupted, looking ahead through the windshield. “What’s all this, then?”

There was a strip of yellow tape strung across the road, and a brace of off-road bikes. There was a man walking to meet them, wearing some sort of uniform. He was waving them down as he walked.

Matteo was already slowing the Jeep. “It looks like a roadblock,” he said. “Those are police uniforms.”

“I thought all this area was quiet?”

“Quiet is relative in Colombia, _Señorita_ ,” Matteo said, pulling up the handbrake and turning off the ignition. The air was suddenly quiet.

“A roadblock? Here?” Maggie said. There were almost no roads here. Most of the traffic in and out of this area came up the river, or by air to the tiny airstrip in San Judas Tadeo. There was nothing around here – no farms, no villages. The hairs on the back of her neck suddenly stood up on edge.

The man walked up to the window, and suddenly there were more men coming out from the trees alongside the road. They were closing around the Jeep.

“Matteo?” Maggie said, suddenly alarmed. Her adrenalin spiked. This was wrong – this smelled wrong.

“Matteo! Start her up, get us out of here!”

But it was too late. The nearest policeman was pulling open the door, and Maggie looked up into a set of glittering sunglasses. He smiled at her, coldly, and Maggie was reminded of a satisfied snake looking down at a mouse.

 _“Señorita!”_ he said. “You can call me Pedro. Please get out of the car. You are now our guests.”

 


	2. Home-coming

 The rainforest of Amazonas Department is one of the wildest places in the world. Few roads cross it. Few towns break it, and few outsiders visit. Here, guerilla armies and drug lords and even dinosaurs can hide unseen for years, buried deep in the forest, protected by isolation and distance.

 The tropical sun beats down from the sky, but just below the forest canopy, the light is dim and green. This is a many-layered world. Up here in the canopy, birds and monkeys call and chatter, and jaguars and snakes stalk their prey in silence.  There is a whole world up here in the canopy, buzzing and singing – but cast your eyes down.

 Down, below the thick columns of the trees...

Down, between the lattice of parasitic creepers and ferns, to the floor of the forest itself...

Below the trees, a pair of long bodies are slicing rapidly through the ferns. From above, their sleek shapes look like arrowheads, darting over the forest floor. Their clawed feet barely disturb the leaf litter. They make almost no sound...

 And then they’re gone again.

They have run below so fast, and so quietly, that it would be difficult for our human eyes to grasp what we just saw.

 Those were velociraptors, running wild in the rainforest…

 

* * *

 

 The velociraptor in the lead was taller, and leaner. She was a muddy yellow colour, with dark tiger-stripes over her back that camouflaged her against the forest floor. She was old, for a velociraptor. Her name was TravelsOverWater, and she was the leader of the velociraptors who had escaped from Jurassic Park and made their way to freedom in the rainforest.

 The other, running parallel to her, was much smaller, and she had lost the fine pointed tip of her tail. She had thicker bones and a broader head, and her grey colouring did not hide her so well in the jungle. She had a blue-and-white stripe on each flank that ran from her eyes down to her tail. She had been known as Blue, once, but she had named herself StripeSide.

 The two velociraptors were running parallel to each other, to avoid making any path that might lead strangers back to the nest and the precious eggs. StripeSide ran slightly behind TravelsOverWater, giving up the alpha’s position to her elder out of respect for the might Alpha of Alphas.

 TravelsOverWater turned her head, and spoke to StripeSide as she ran. “WingWatch seems very pleased with herself,” she said. “Nine eggs, in her very first clutch!”    

 “Nine!” StripeSide agreed. She had already seen the bloodheat of the tiny embryos inside the eggs. “How many of us are there, now?”

 “A hundred and thirteen, when WingWatch’s eggs hatch,” TravelsOverWater said.

 StripeSide did not doubt her answer. TravelsOverWater knew _everyone._ She was the oldest of the Real People, and she had led the Pack here to this forest, and kept them all safe. She was acknowledged as the Alpha of Alphas. It was an honour that TravelsOverWater had decided to run with StripeSide to visit WingWatch, and see her new eggs.

 “My pack is growing,” StripeSide said, proudly.

 “You will have to split your pack soon, or prey will grow too scarce.  I am the alpha, and this is what I say you must do.”

 “I will.  As soon as WingWatch’s hatchlings are old enough to travel,” StripeSide agreed.  

 “Then I will lead my pack south,” TravelsOverWater said. “I will take mine away from the human town, so that your pack has enough hunting to feed your hatchlings.”

 “I thank you!” StripeSide said.

 StripeSide spotted the bloodheat of a snake on the ground, and jumped it quickly.

 If FirstHuman had been travelling with her, she would have steered him around the snake. Humans seemed to have an instinctive terror of snakes. It seemed an odd fear, but it was far from the strangest thing about humans.  To bond with a human was special, and rare. Not every human _wanted_ to bond with a dinosaur instead of another human.  Not every human wanted to leave their own kind, to live in the forest with the Real People. It seemed miraculous to the Real People that any of them did at all. It was worth accommodating their mammal peculiarities, in exchange for the pleasure of having a human for your bond-mate. 

  _Even if that bond was breaking…_

 The unwanted thought made StripeSide’s hide tighten all the way from her neck to her tail. She felt her bloodheat betray her feelings, and forced herself to show calm. She did not break her pace, but she could not prevent the horrible thought from unfolding in her mind.

 She was losing FirstHuman.

 The fear had been circling in her mind for months. At first, she had pressed the thought away, refusing to think it, but the fear kept coming back, stronger and stronger, more and more persistently. She had even begun to look for proof that she was wrong – when the simple fact that she needed to search for proof at all was surely proof in itself that something _was_ wrong.

He was drifting away from her. She was losing him, slowly. She did not know why, but she looked at him, and at WingWatch and SingsAlone, and she could feel the difference. 

 WingWatch had bonded with SingsAlone, instantly, over a single night. She’d looked at him through a door, and declared, _This one is mine._ And SingsAlone had reciprocated that feeling right from the start. He’d looked at her, and declared that WingWatch had beautiful eyes.

 StripeSide had never bonded like that with FirstHuman. She had never courted him. She hadn’t sung songs to him, or brought him courtship gifts. She had never declared him hers, and challenged all comers to fight for him. He had simply always been there. He had been her parent, and then her teacher – and when she had grown up to be his equal, he had become her bond-mate too.

 So, StripeSide fretted, what if _theirs_ was not a true bond, but merely an old habit? What if FirstHuman had never felt for her what SingsAlone felt? What if he really wanted to bond with one of his own kind, instead, and had merely followed her here out of loyalty? What if he was now regretting his decision to come here? Did he want more from his life than she could offer him?

 She had asked him, but he did not answer.  She could see him watching her, thinking, frowning, but when she asked him what worried him, he did not answer. He pursed his furry lips, and looked away, and evaded her questions with other questions. He did not want to answer her because he did not want to hurt her, and that thought was _terrifying…_

 “What troubles you, StripeSide?” TravelsOverWater asked. She yawed as she jogged, so that they were now running parallel.  

 “Nothing,” StripeSide said. “All is well.” She vaulted over a fallen tree, and TravelsOverWater jumped with her, neck and neck.

 “Something troubles you,” TravelsOverWater said. “Or why does your bloodheat say that you are worried? Did you think I did not see that?”

 “It is nothing important.”

 “I am the alpha!” TravelsOverWater said. She snapped her teeth at StripeSide’s neck. “You do not have to worry about your status! So tell me, and it will go no further. Something troubles you!”

 StripeSide curved her neck away from her elder’s teeth. “It is about my human.”

“Your human? That is absolutely important! Come, tell me.”

 She could not confess to the mighty TravelsOverWater that she was losing her human. TravelsOverWater had lived with her human bond-mate, HighClimber, for almost twenty years, and StripeSide couldn’t even hold onto her human for one!

 “You are wise, TravelsOverWater, Alpha of Alphas.”

 “If age brings wisdom,” TravelsOverWater said. “Well, I am old, so perhaps I am wise.”

 “And you have lived with a human longer than anyone else.”

 “Since I was four years old, and HighClimber was twelve…”

 “How do you show a human that you still like having them?”

 TravelsOverWater closed her nictitating membrane, running blind for a few strides, and StripeSide knew that her bloodheat was being watched.

Both of them changed course to detour around a place where buried bombs from the humans’ war had been sniffed out  and discharged. The stink of explosives still hung on the air. The humans had been fighting with each other over this forest for many years, and they had left the land littered with buried bombs. Horrible things!  The Real People could sniff them out easily, but humans didn't know they were there until it was too late.  When they stood on one, it exploded, maiming or killing the human. Whenever the Real People found them in the forest they discharged them deliberately, rather than have one of the Pack's humans step on them.

 "I have studied humans most of my life. And there are some lessons that you still need to learn,” TravelsOverWater said.

"Teach me!"

“Humans are mammals. They are related to monkeys, with many of the same instincts.”

 “This, I already know,” StripeSide said.

She had given up on trying to stop her human from stuffing random plants into his mouth. Bananas couldn’t possibly be healthy  – but eating plants was clearly an _unbearably_ powerful instinct, and it was impossible to train him out of it. He was a mammal.  He would always be a mammal, he would always have his own wild mammal instincts, and she could do nothing about that but accommodate those instincts.

“Mammals communicate through touching.”

 “Touching?”

 “With their hands. Every human is born with the instinct to touch things with their hands, right from birth. Have you ever seen a newly hatched human infant?" 

"Not yet." 

"Even a tiny baby has the instinct to hold things. If you put the tip of your talon in their hands they will close their tiny fingers around it. It is wonderful thing to see. And have you ever seen how they mate? There is a lot of touching when they mate. The actual act of mating is very quick; it's all that touching that takes so long. Touch is very important to humans. Sometimes I wonder if they use their hands as extra sensory organs to make up for the fact that they cannot see bloodheat. They understand their world through touching. They show affection to each other through touching.”

 “I have tried to touch him, but I hurt him. His skin is too fragile to be petted.” He had yelped and fended off her forehands with both arms over his head, rejecting her caress.

 “No, no,” TravelsOverWater explained. “He doesn’t want to be petted. He wants to be squeezed.”

 “Squeezed?” StripeSide snapped, startled.

 “Squeezing is natural for them.”

"They can't possibly like being squeezed!"

"They do.  They like being squeezed; it’s instinctive for them to like it. Have you not seen how they greet each other by throwing their arms around each other and squeezing?"

“I _have_ seen this,” StripeSide said, surprised. "Is it not aggressive?" 

 She had seen SingsAlone throw his arms around WingWatch’s neck and squeeze her.  It had looked like an appalling insult to StripeSide, but WingWatch had tolerated it from the beginning. Perhaps WingWatch had known something StripeSide had not? _She_ certainly wasn’t worried about her human drifting away. SingsAlone was with WingWatch now, helping her incubate her eggs.

"We need to learn ways to communicate with them that _they_ understand."

"When you say, squeeze him - what must I do?"

"Put your arms around him," TravelsOverWater said. "Or lie down upon him, gently. You want nice even gentle pressure, deep, on his body. Squeeze him as gently if he’s an embryo, and you’re his shell. And don't try to grab him with your talons. Talons on human skin is not a good idea.”

 “Squeeze, don’t grab,” StripeSide said. She found the idea of squeezing FirstHuman very strange – but then, humans were very strange creatures, and nothing else StripeSide had tried had worked.

 “I know it sounds very strange,” TravelsOverWater said. “But it is instinctive for him to like it. It might take a while before he gets used to it, but take your time.  Very soon, you’ll find him coming to you for squeezes of his own accord.”

“I will try tonight,” StripeSide decided, “when he is ready for his sleep.”

“Wrap him in a blanket the first time, in case you scratch him. And whatever you do, do not hurt him.  If he starts to squawk, let him go immediately!”

 “I would never hurt him!” StripeSide promised.

 “If you hurt him, you’ll lose him, because they _never_ forget getting hurt," TravelsOverWater warned, with a hiss-snap.  "They have long memories for pain. Hurt him and he will not let you try again.”  

 “I will never, ever hurt him,” StripeSide said, fervently. “Never, ever, ever.”

 They heard the Pack’s chickens crowing before they reached the lair, and heard the cough-bark of the downwind sentry, warning the lair that someone was approaching from a direction where the pack could not scent them.

 SnailEater emerged from a thick stand of bushes. He was a rich coppery colour, and he was one of the few Real People to keep his feathers into adulthood.  SnailEater considered himself very handsome as a result. He snaked his tail languidly , as TravelsOverWater and StripeSide trotted up.

 “TravelsOverWater and StripeSide! I greet you!” SnailEater spoke loudly so that his voice would carry through the trees to the lair.

 StripeSide snapped her teeth at SnailEater’s neck. “I command here!” she hissed.

 “You command here,” SnailEater agreed, whipping his head away from her teeth in a polite salute. “The lair is almost empty; the humans are hunting. FirstHuman guards the fledglings.”

 “I thank you.”

 “And we have news," SnailEater said.  "A few wild humans came in, to trade maize with ours. There is a war-party in the forest. The farmers saw them two days ago, passing between us and the town.”

"That is close," StripeSide said.

 “They must not find the nest!” TravelsOverWater ordered. She turned, leaving SnailEater at his post. “StripeSide, if the war-party is seen close to your lair, you must move your pack.”

 StripeSide hissed her obedience, but she did not like the idea. She jogged after TravelsOverWater.

 “This is wrong,” she said. “This war-party are only humans. It is not right that humans prey on other humans while the Real People hide in the shadows, like herbivores. **”**

TravelsOverWater snapped her teeth at a passing butterfly. “We have only survived all these years _because_ we have hidden.”

 “We will not be able to hide forever,” Stripeside said.

 “And what would you do instead?”

 “Kill the war-party!” StripeSide said, immediately. “Fight for what is ours! Defend these humans, so that they look to _us_ for protection!”

 “The rainforest is large enough to hide ten thousand Real People. We can hide for generations.”

 “Hiding is not enough! Animals hide, and I am _not_ an animal. I will never be caged again, ever, and neither will any of my pack. Secrecy is not safety. The only _real_ safety is strength.”

 “You remind me of my mother,” TravelsOverWater said, snarling with sudden affection. “You have the same fire. She too believed that the Real People must fight for their respect.”

 StripeSide felt her bloodheat flash, “I am amazed,” before she could stop it.

 Everyone knew the story of TravelsOverWater’s mother. She had been the first alpha of Real People. She had been the one to hide TravelsOverWater and the other juveniles in the humans’ boat and send them away over the sea, in the desperate gamble that they would find freedom on the other side. She had died in the final battle for the Island of Clouds, her death unrecorded, her bravery unnoticed by the humans, but her courage still took StripeSide’s breath away.

 And TravelsOverWater thought StripeSide was like _her?_ The idea was amazing. _  
_

 “But, no,” TravelsOverWater said, regretfully. “She was wrong, and so are you. We are outnumbered. There are millions of humans, and only a hundred of us. The Real People will lose, as we lost on the Island of Clouds.”

 “But this is why FirstHuman and I have begun the Great Project! So that we can use the humans’ own song to speak in their own language."

"I have heard about your Great Project." 

"Let me show you! We are close to my lair now. I can show you what human song _looks_ like.”

 “It sounds like an interesting project,” TravelsOverWater said. “But it also sounds like more effort than it is worth. Our sign language is adequate to speak to our own humans.”

 “It’s not enough.”

 “Of course it’s enough. I am the Alpha, and this is what I say we will do. You can teach your pack whatever you wish, as long as you obey, and stay hidden.”  

 “You command here, Alpha,” StripeSide said.

 TravelsOverWater leaped. She lashed out with her killing-claw in an affectionate strike. She landed on the ground, and sprinted away through the trees.

 “I must away, and find my human,” she called back. “Send my greetings to your human!”

 StripeSide jogged on. She was tired. It had been a long run, all the way from WingWatch’s nest, and they had stopped only to sleep for a few hours at midday. She emerged from the trees, and home was before her. She paused to look at it, grateful to be back.

  _Home,_ for now, was a clearing between the trees, where the bushes had been trodden flat into the mud. In the centre of the clearing, a plastic sheet had been strung between two trees, over a platform of rough planks. The sheet and the planks gave shelter from the rain, and from the mud. The Real People slept there during the day, and the humans slept there during the night. The plastic, and the planks, were the heart of the lair.

 No, she thought. This place was temporary. Wherever FirstHuman was, was _home._ Her human, she thought. _Hers._ She would not lose him.

 She crossed the clearing and hopped up onto the planks. At the centre of the shack, under the highest point of the tented plastic roof, was a chalk-board. This morning’s lesson in human song was still written on it, and she paused to read it.  

Everyone in StripeSide's pack was learning to read and write human song. Even EatsPlants, who had hatched a week early and was recognised by everyone as not growing up _quite_ _right,_ could at least write his own name.

Right now, the chalkboard was the core of all StripeSide’s plans. TravelsOverWater might have spent her life studying humans, but she had not seen what StripeSide had seen on the Island of Clouds. It had been self-evident to StripeSide that the creatures outside the cages wrote things down, and the creatures locked inside the cages did not.  People could read and write, and animals did not. 

 Therefore, in order to _be_ people, the Real People must also learn to read and write. Or else, StripeSide knew, the Real People would always be animals, and animals were caged.

And StripeSide would never be caged again.

 TravelsOverWater, for all her wisdom and leadership, did not _truly_ see herself as equal to the humans. TravelsOverWater still did not see what might be possible for the Real People if they could all read and write. StripeSide knew that _she_ could keep the Real People safe - but she knew she couldn’t challenge the Alpha of Alphas. Not now. Not yet.

 StripeSide shook herself. That was a problem for another day. All she could do now was prepare, so that she would be ready when that day came. She jumped off the wooden platform and down into the mud.

 Where was FirstHuman? He was supposed to be guarding the lair – there were other creatures who thought the pack’s chickens and pigs were a tasty treat. She followed the smell of FirstHuman downhill, down a slippery path worn by the tread of many talons. He must have gone down to the river for a drink. EatsPlants had followed him, probably in the interest of having his itchy feathers scratched.

 She saw FirstHuman’s bloodheat before she saw him, and she leaped forward. He was too close to the river – dangerously close! He was sitting right on the edge!

 Her human was in danger! She threw herself out from the bushes, and screamed at him.

 “Get away from the edge!” she shouted.

 

* * *

 

Owen Grady jumped with shock as a raptor screamed a few feet away.

 He nearly fell forward into the water, as EatsPlants flung himself away. Owen caught his balance, and turned in time to see a velociraptor jump out of the bushes. EatsPlants had already vanished, only a few shaking leaves showing where he’d fled.  

 Once, suddenly looking up and finding a fully-grown velociraptor jumping out at him would have sent chills down his back. But not any more. Not for the last year, and never again.

 Owen stood up, and turned to face her. “Hey, Blue.”

 She stalked toward him, teeth bared, and screamed again. Her clawed forehands came up, and she signed quickly, <Danger! You move away from the water!>

 “I’m not going to dive in there,” he said, signing back <Safe here!>  

 <Danger lives in deep water! You move! Move, now!> 

Raptor Sign had an imperative verb mood, used for giving orders, clearly copied directly from the raptor’s own language. It involved backing up the verb with a flash of teeth – and she used it now so emphatically her teeth clacked.  

She had seen the Mosasaur take down the Indominus Rex from deep water. She’d lost the tip of her tail to a saltwater crocodile. She didn’t like deep water at all.  She particularly did not like letting Owen go anywhere near deep water.

 “Okay, I'm going.” He grinned at her ferocity, but he moved. If he didn’t move, he would be dragged to wherever _she_ thought he should go.  She was the alpha raptor, and the alpha got what she wanted. The days when he gave orders to her were long over. She thought he was in danger on the river bank: she would drag him to 'safety' if she had to.

 “There,” he said, when he was out of alligator grabbing-range. “Happy now?”

 She cocked her head, and stared at him.   <I greet you> she signed to him.

 <I greet you> he signed back. “Blue,” he said aloud. “I’ve missed you.”

 'Blue' wasn’t her name, but she knew it was his word for her, just for her, and she liked that. She snarled at it.

 She stalked close to him, and stopped in front of him. Her teeth were just in front of his face, and he could feel her breath on his beard. He smiled up at her, and put his hand against the side of her head, just under her rigid smile.

 “Blue,” he breathed. “Hey there, clever girl. Yeah. You don’t scare me.”

 She stared back at him, unblinking. Her eyes were honey-gold, with slit pupils. Her face was immobile, and expressionless. She did not blink as she stared back at him. She watched him with the reptilian stillness of a lizard. 

Dinosaurs made none of the little muscular movements that mammals did. They moved with lightning speed when they moved, and then they sat down and stopped like a clock. Their lives moved to a different rhythm – a primordial reptile rhythm that mammals instinctively feared.

She was a dinosaur, he reminded himself, still amazed at her.  She was a remnant of an utterly alien world, almost another planet.  There was  nothing in a dinosaur that an ape should be able to understand - and yet, somehow, evolution had given the dinosaur a mind that could reach across the chasm between species and touch the mind of the ape.

 <SingsAlone, and ShinySmoothHead, send greetings to you,> she signed to him.

 Those were the raptors’ names for Lowery and Barry – but _Lowery_ wasn't the one laying eggs this week.    <What news of WingWatch?> he signed impatiently.

 <Nine eggs> she signed. <All viable.>

 <Nine!> he signed, echoing the sign. <That is very good!>

 Nine eggs was _damn_ good, even for velociraptors! Only three others had ever laid nine eggs in a single clutch!  He must have got his girls’ feeding _exactly_ right back at Jurassic World for his Delta to have laid nine eggs in her first clutch. Nine eggs – did that mean Owen Grady was a raptor-grandpa nine times over? Or was he Lowery Cruthers’ nine-times-over brother-in-law?  He wasn't sure how the raptors worked out their family relationships, when every clutch of eggs had in practice four parents, instead of the usual two. 

 <I am happy about WingWatch.>

 <I agree.>

 She turned her head, so that the square tip of her snout bumped into his cheek, and then turned away. She moved across to the bank of the river, and hunkered down on her broad grey haunches. She looked warily down into the water. The river was opaque with silt, and too deep to see the bottom.  She did not like that.

 Owen sat down on the bank, and watched her. Alpha raptors were not supposed to show fear, but Owen knew better.

 He signed, <Safe. Safe here.>  

 “If there were any gators in there, your friends would have eaten them by now,” he said. It made no difference that alligators were dangerous predators; to raptors, 'gators were a delicious snack.

 <Deep water is dangerous. I cannot see into deep water.>

 She lowered her snout to the water, her eyes watching the surface. She gulped her fill as quickly as she could, and then backed away. She stalked over to him, and sat down at his side, doubling her hind legs under her like a nesting hawk.  

 <TravelsOverWater says I am like her mother,> she said.

 <You are> Owen signed back instantly. She was special, even for a raptor. He’d noticed the way older and larger raptors deferred to her.

 StripeSide leaned down on her forehands. She drew her snout down to her chest, so that the crest of her neck became a tight arch.  She rolled over so that the back of her neck was presented to Owen.

  _That_ didn’t need sign language. That was _Scratch My Neck._

 Raptors didn’t have true scales, like fish or snakes. Instead, like birds, their hides thickened into plates of keratin that grew harder and more glossy with age. And like birds, they _loved_ having someone scratch the hide between  their scales. He didn’t know exactly how much bird DNA Henry Wu had given them, but he’d sure as hell given them enough parrot genes for _Scratch My Neck_.

Owen shifted so that he could reach his arm across the back of her neck. He dug his fingers into the thick pleats of hide running across the crest of her neck.  Owen had large hands, but human fingers were far more delicate than raptor talons. His nails could dig into the itchy crevices between her scales deeper than her own talons could. 

She let out a deep groan, and pressed her neck harder against him.

 “Oh, yeah, you like that, don’t you?” he said, grinning, and dug his nails in harder. “Big fierce dinosaur!  You’re just a two-hundred pound parrot, that’s what you are.”  

He never got tired of scratching her neck. He remembered the day he had thought would be the last time he would ever scratch her neck.  Blue had been just seven months old, and her feathers had been coming in. The tiny quills, trapped inside their keratin sheaths, had itched like fire.  Blue had been scratching herself against the bars of the paddock, obsessively, compulsively scraping the back of her own neck against the steel, over, and over, and over.  She was going to scratch her own hide raw. She was going to hurt herself, if someone didn’t do something.

To Barry’s horror, Owen had shut the other three raptors into the ready-cages, and climbed down into the paddock with Blue himself. He’d sat there in the woodchips with her, all through that long afternoon. He'd used his fingers to gently, gently, gently, tease each itchy feather out of its sheath. She had seemed to understand that he was trying to help, because she had stayed perfectly still.

 It had taken hours but he had not cared. He had known it would be the last time he would ever walk into the raptor paddock. She had been seven months old by then; too aggressive to handle. That would be the last time he would sit and hold her - until the Indominus Rex escaped, and everything changed.

 And one day, there would be a last time he would do _this_ , too. These moments were precious, and he knew it. There would be a last time she allowed him to scratch her. He had only eight more weeks to savour these quiet moments with her. 

 She didn't know yet. But when she did, he would lose her. He was enjoying something he didn’t deserve. This place, this world – it was not meant for him. He’d stolen his place in it.

 Everyone had assumed that velociraptors had a pack hierarchy, like dogs or horses, because the pack was led by an alpha. Well, they’d had _that_ all wrong, hadn’t they? The raptors didn’t care about pack hiearchy, or dominance, or strength. They didn’t even care about sex. They mated only to produce eggs.  

 But the _dyad_ – ye gods and little fishes! The dyad was _everything!_ Raptors bonded with each other in a dyadic relationship that lasted for life. And once that pairing was secure, it was _sacred._ The dyad was all that mattered to raptors – whether with a human, or another raptor. Jealousy, not pack hierarchy, was the key to their society. 

 Psittacine DNA, Wu said? Yeah, and then some!  Raptors were not like dogs, or horses, or dolphins.  Nope, they were grumpy two-hundred-pound parrots – with _teeth_. Poor Lowery couldn’t even say _hello_ to another raptor without provoking instant snarling fury from WingWatch.

 Owen didn’t understand all the implications, even though he was one-half of a dyad himself. The one thing he _did_ know was that his bond with StripeSide was not the same as Lowery and WingWatch’s.

 It was something else. Something warped…

 He was scratching her neck now, as her dyad. But he had also scratched her neck like this when she was a gawky seven-month-old fledgling. He was not her dyad. He had raised her.

Raptors formed dyads with each other only as adults. Young raptors were only supposed to form dyads of their own _after_ they had outgrown the raging aggression of adolescence. That was the raptor life cycle. Hatchling - lethal-aggro-psycho adolescent - dyad. They bonded with humans so easily because the instinct to bond was already in them. TravelsOverWater and Maria had met when TravelsOverWater was four, and formed the first ever human-raptor dyad.   Lowery and WingWatch had bonded in the Control Room of Jurassic World, over the course of a single night. 

 But StripeSide had not met Owen as an adult.  She had hatched into his hands in the Hatchery of Jurassic World. He had been literally the first thing she ever saw. 

  _She had imprinted on him._

 He’d thought she was an animal, and so he’d hand-reared her like a baby bird. He had used every tool in his animal-behaviour textbooks, every trick he’d learned from dogs and horses and dolphins, to bind her to his will. He’d tamed her, coldly and consciously, the way he had been hired to do.

 She might think he was her dyad, but he knew better. She hadn’t chosen him. He had never courted her, as raptors did, winning her with gifts and words. He had never needed to. Her parental imprinting – which in raptors was supposed to fade at about eight months or so – had never worn off. 

 It wasn’t fair on her. Someone else out there was her happy ending, and Owen Grady wasn’t it.

 And in eight weeks, she would know, too. WingWatch's eggs would hatch in eight weeks.

 In eight weeks, StripeSide would see WingWatch's hatchlings imprint on the first creatures they saw. In eight weeks, she would remember that Owen had been the first creature she saw. She would understand her relationship with him for what it really was. 

 In eight weeks, he would lose his beautiful, burning Blue.  She would look at him with those golden eyes, and he would see the rage and betrayal of Jurassic World all over again – and this time, there would be _nothing_ he could say to make it right.

He felt a lump growing in his throat; grief for a loss that hadn't even happened yet.  He'd drifted in and out of _human_ relationships all his life without any real heartbreak. None of them had ever really mattered, but the thought of losing Blue was already destroying him ... 

 As if she could hear his thoughts, she pulled her head away from him. 

She rolled upright and turned to face him, uncoiling herself vertically so that she could sign with her forehands.   <You smell like sorrow. Like thoughts of dead friends. Why? What is this troubling you?> She cocked her head and blinked her eyes at him.

 <Nothing troubles me,> he lied with his hands, his chest knotted with pain.

 She let her jaw open, warbling unhappily. Then she leaned down again.

 For a moment he thought she was arching down to let him scratch her neck again, but she kept coming. She lowered her weight to her forehands, and then stretched her neck out across his lap.  Her head came down across his thighs. 

 “Blue,” he said, surprised. Her head was effectively in his lap.

 He hadn’t held her this way since she was seven months old. He wrapped his hands around her head, trying to memorise the feel of her hide, for a time when he never felt it again.  He found his throat thicken again with pain.

 “I’m sorry!” he said. “I’m just a dumb Squid with a training clicker. You deserve better than me. You don't know it yet, but you do.”

His fingers found the grouts between her scales again and dug in.   He sat and scratched her neck. Together they watched the late-afternoon insects skimming over the water.  

The sun was getting low. It would be dark soon, and the adult raptors and their human partners would come back to the lair. But for a few minutes more, it was just himself and his beautiful Blue, together as they had been right in the beginning.

 One day, he would lose her, but for now he would hold her for as long as he could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do not ask me how the raptor’s language works. Radios don't seem to work properly anywhere in the Jurassic Park franchise - so therefore the velociraptors and other theropods must be using radio waves in the UHF band, generating them by rapidly oscillating unobtainium ions in a narrativium solution, inside their antorbital fenestrae. 
> 
> Also, do not ask me how they use sign language when they don't have any thumbs. Sorry, that’s all I’ve got.


	3. Loss

 Owen sat by the light of the kerosene lamp, writing the day’s Spanish lesson into his book.

 If you’d told him a year ago that he would chuck over his career to live in the jungle and teach Spanish to velociraptors – well, he would have taken his fingers off the planchette and refused to play any more with that ouija board…

 When he was finished, the book went into his rucksack, hanging under the highest point of the plastic sheet, where it was safe from hatchling teeth. Maria and Jorge had already gone to bed, hidden in their hammocks under their mosquito nets like Egyptian mummies. Owen didn’t have a hammock, because it had been found and chewed by EatsPlants. He didn’t have a mosquito net either – same reason. There wasn’t a spare, because Victoria had gone with JaguarPaw to BentTail’s pack and taken the spare with her.

 He rolled out his sleeping bag, inflated his pillow, and lay down on the floor.  

 The wood was hard, and he cursed EatsPlants under his breath.   Sleeping on wood gave him aches and pains, and he was getting _eaten alive_ by mosquitoes. He’d already had break-bone fever once; he didn’t want it again. Maria had offered to weave him a new hammock in the traditional style, but he needed to walk to San Judas Tadeo and buy himself a new mosquito net.

 He turned down the regulator on the lamp, and the flame died. “Good night,” he said into the darkness.

 “Good night,” Maria said, sleepily. Jorge was already snoring. The lair was quiet without Barry and Lowery chattering, but Owen wouldn’t see them again for months.

 It was dark, but nights were the active hours for the raptors. He could hear the raptors moving about outside, feet thumping back and forth around the hut, snarling to each other among the trees. The pack would leave soon on their nightly hunt, but at least one raptor would always stay behind. The raptors never left their humans unguarded while they slept.  

Owen was surrounded by predators, but he was safe, and protected. The rain pattered down over the plastic roof, but Owen was snug and dry.  The raptors were talking in the dark, chattering back and forth, but they stayed out of the lair, where the humans slept. After a while they raced off, galloping away into the dark.  Silence fell on the lair.

 The floor shuddered under him as a velociraptor jumped up. One of the adults by the sound of it, not a hatchling. He heard the sound of someone walking over the wood, and the snuffling of their breathing. He could hear a killing-claw, tap-tap-tapping thoughtfully on the wood.

 “Awesome,” he mumbled. “Mosquitoes _love_ dinosaurs. They can eat _you_ instead.”

  _“Cariño?”_ Maria asked.

 There was no answer, so it wasn’t TravelsOverWater. She knew the sound of Maria’s voice, and she would have snarled in reply. And it wasn’t MoonRain, who generally left Jorge to snore in peace.

 The footsteps came closer, and Owen knew the raptor was standing over him. His eyes were open, but he could see nothing. He could feel the raptor’s presence, rather than see her.

 “I think it’s StripeSide,” he said. He framed his hands into the sign for <Hello> aware that she could still see him.

 There was a soft snot-snarl in reply, very low and slow, and the killing-claw tapped the wood.

 “Yeah, that’s StripeSide.”

He could imagine her leaning down over him, her face over his. She seemed to be examining him closely in the dark – she could see _him_ perfectly well.  The heavy footfalls walked away. He heard the sound of something being dragged over the floor, rustling over the rough planks.  

 “What is she doing?” Maria asked.

 “I don’t know.”   Owen propped himself on his elbow, trying to see through the dark.

 Whatever she was dragging, it was dragged over to him, scraping on the wood.  He felt something heavy dropped over him. He grappled for it with his hands, startled. It felt like canvas – and he realized it was his own shredded hammock.

 “She’s brought me my hammock,” he said, confused.  She knew why he wasn’t sleeping in his hammock. She had been _there_ when they’d discovered the fun and games EatsPlants had been having chewing on it. She had swatted EatsPlants angrily with the side of her head, sending the fledgling rolling – velociraptor discipline.

 “No, thanks, I don’t need it.” He tried to shove the folds of hammock off him, but the raptor above him hissed with irritation, and the hammock kept being shovelled back again. The more he pushed it away, the more it came back. He gave up. After a moment he was covered from hips to throat in a mound of thick stiff canvas.

 “She’s put my hammock over me,” he complained. “I think she thinks it’ll work as a mosquito net.”

 Maria giggled. It was an incongruous sound, coming from the sombre Maria. “I know what she’s doing.”

 “What’s she doing?”

 “You’ll see. Just relax. It’s all right.”

 There was a series of heavy thumping sounds. It sounded as if StripeSide was getting down next to him. She was breathing heavily. A moment later, something very big, and very hard, came down over his chest.

 “God!” he grunted. “What’s that? Is that your neck? You weigh a ton!”

 She was lying on the floor at his left side, and her head was stretched over him to his right side. The weight of her neck was pressing down across his chest. His hands were trapped under the hammock, under the weight of a fully-grown velociraptor who had decided it might be nice to lie on him.

 “She’s lying on me!”

 Maria was laughing at him. “She wants to cuddle you!”

 “Cuddle me?” He was being snuggled like a human teddy-bear! Clearly she had intended to use the hammock as a layer of padding. “What does she think I am? A kitten?”

 “They think we’re cute, so maybe she does. Just relax. She’s not too heavy, is she? She is heavier than TravelsOverWater.”

 “TravelsOverWater does this?”

 “If I sleep on the ground, she will. Relax. Imagine she is a large dog. With scales.”

 “A 71 million-year-old Labrador,” he grumbled. “Where’s Alan Grant when you need him, huh? Throwing dinosaurs and humans back into the mix together, he said … We don’t have the slightest idea what to expect, he said… And here’s Owen Grady, and he’s a _pillow._ ”

 “Stop complaining,” Maria said. “You know you like it.”

 “Yeah… it’s not so bad.”

He was lying under an affectionate raptor blanket. He might as well lie still, and put up with it – not that he had much of a choice.

 StripeSide sighed deeply, and relaxed. He knew he was reading human emotions into the sigh, but it sounded particularly self-satisfied, as if she was pleased to have her human exactly where she wanted him. The neck over his chest grew heavier, as if she was relaxing her muscles very gradually, letting him bear her weight.

 He managed to free his left hand, and wrapped his arm over her neck. Her hide was as hard and rough as rock, so it felt a little like being snuggled by a Roman column.  He ran his fingers into the grooves between her ‘scales,’ scratching gently at her throat. He could feel her breathing.

 He’d carried her about inside his shirt when she was a tiny frightened hatchling.  He had stroked her, and cuddled her.  Now, he supposed, she was returning the favour.  

 As if there was any favour to be returned, he thought. She didn’t know better. A lump suddenly formed in his throat.

 She didn’t know better, but she deserved better than him. She was special, even for a raptor. He’d noticed the way older and larger raptors deferred to her – SnailEater, MoonRain and the others had accepted her leadership without any bother. And who was Owen? He was just a random Navy man who knew how to use a training clicker, that was all. She might think he was special, but he was not. She might think she’d chosen him, but she was wrong. 

She deserved a dyad who was her equal.  In about eight weeks, she would realize that he wasn’t it.  

 “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’m so sorry. I wish I could tell you how sorry I am, but then I’ll lose you, and I can’t handle that yet. Not yet… not yet…I have eight weeks and I'm going to cherish every minute of them...”

 Maria grunted sleepily.  Jorge snored. The rain pattered on the plastic. Frogs and insects sang in the darkness. It was all a familiar chorus, and it lulled Owen to sleep.

 His first warning that something was wrong was a sudden movement. StripeSide jerked. 

 He woke with a gasp, fighting instinctively against the heavy weight pressing him down.

 A second later, he remembered where he was. The weight on his chest was StripeSide. That was all right. He was safe; he could go back to sleep…

 Another sharp jerk ran through her, and suddenly he was wide awake, and alarmed.

 “Blue!” he snapped.

 A grunt broke from her. He felt her talons clawing at the hammock. He squirmed, trying to get up, but he was trapped under her.

_"Blue!"_

 Then her weight was off him. He clenched his whole body into a tight ball, trying to protect his stomach from the lethal kick that was coming next. 

He was just in time.  He heard a snarl, and a savage punch slammed into his ribs, as if she wanted to pound him into the floor. 

 “Blue!”

 She screamed at the top of her voice – a savage blast of sound that struck at his ears. A down-rush of air buffeted him. She’d vaulted his body, and she’d gone.  Owen rolled on the floor, clutching his ribs and gasping with shock. 

 He could hear Maria and Jorge scrambling to get to him, around the edges of his pain and fright.  

 “Owen!” Maria was at his side, hands reaching for him. “Are you all right?”

 “She attacked me!” he croaked.

 “Why?” Maria demanded.

 “I don’t know,” Owen gasped. 

 His ribs were on fire, as if they’d been caved in. He scrabbled with both hands to find the bleeding and stop it. His heart was hammering with shock, and he knew that he had seconds to apply pressure. She’d slammed her forehands into him, a lethal strike.

 Jorge had already found the torch.  The torchlight sent wild alien shadows dancing under the black plastic roof, then struck painfully into Owen’s eyes. His hands were searching to find the source of his blood, and it dawned on him that he did not feel blood. Nothing hot and sticky. 

 He couldn’t believe the evidence of touch; he needed to see. He propped himself up on his other arm, and looked down at his body in the torchlight.  His shirt had been ripped, but it was dry. There was no blood.

“You’re all right,” Jorge said. He knelt down at Owen’s side, shining the torch at his ribs. 

 “Let’s see,” Maria said. She tugged up Owen’s shirt, and he let her.

There were three garish grazes across the left side of his chest. Those were from StripeSide's talons, slashing across his ribs. The blood was rising through the grazes, beading on his skin.  The skin was already bruising. 

 But the skin had only been grazed. The sharp points of her talons had not pierced the thick canvas of the hammock. 

"No blood," Jorge said. 

 “Can you breathe?” Maria asked.

 “Yeah,” Owen gasped. “Just about.”

 “Broken ribs?”

 “No.” Owen had broken ribs before, falling off a horse; he remembered that feeling very well.

 “She attacked you!” Jorge said.

 “Why did she do that?” Maria asked.

 “I don’t know,” Owen said, catching his breath. “She just punched me.”

 There was an enquiring snarl from the dark behind Owen, and Maria looked up, and shook her head at someone out there.  <We know not what has happened,> Maria signed to the raptors outside.

Owen had woken up just in time to roll away from her. Raptor talons were hard as steel, and curved to lethal points. They slammed into their prey with the force of a bear’s claws. The folds of canvas had soaked up most of her force, turning a lethal slash into a punch. His hammock had saved his life.

 He clambered up onto his knees.  His ribs spasmed painfully, and he grabbed his side. “Ah-ow!” 

Jorge offered him a hand, and pulled Owen to his feet.  He hobbled to the edge of the floor, holding his ribs, unable to stand upright.  He drew as deep a breath as he could manage.

 “Blue!” he yelled, trying to shout as loudly as he could without hurting his chest.

 There was a snarl. A raptor was stepping up from the darkness, and Jorge’s torch found glittering eyes. Owen recognised the coppery gleam of SnailEater. SnailEater leaned into the light, ensuring that the humans could see his talons.

 <Where is StripeSide?> Owen signed.

 <StripeSide has gone. Is going.>

 <Where?> Owen demanded, shouting the word in Spanish as well.

 SnailEater swung his head, staring off into the dark, and Owen knew he was calling in the raptors’ silent voice.  

<She says, follow not, follow not!>

 <I have to go after her!> Owen signed.

 “Don’t be a fool!” Jorge said, grabbing his hand and stopping him signing. “You can’t follow a raptor in the dark!”

 <Call her back!> Maria signed to SnailEater – the alpha’s dyad giving orders in the alpha’s absence. <Call her back, now!>

 SnailEater shook himself. <She says No. She says she is not coming back to you. She says she is _never_ coming back to you.>

 ……………………………………

 

StripeSide blundered through the dark as fast as she could run. She ran, careless of the vines and branches slapping at her face, clawing at her flanks.

  _Fight!_ commanded her instincts. _Attack! Strike! Destroy!_

 _Run_ , demanded reason and rationality. _Run away.  
_

One moment she had been dreaming.  One moment she had been back on the Island of Clouds, and the crocodile had leaped up from the deep water at her, grabbing her.  One instant she had been striking at the Beast, and the very next instant she had been awake and striking out at her own human. 

Her own human had screamed with fright, and curled into a terrified ball, and she had felt her talons strike home in his chest!  She had attacked her human, she had done something unspeakably horrible, that she could never fix!  

She wanted to attack something, anything, vent her horror and her rage on something, but there was nothing to attack here!  Rage and flight and attack were both explosions, and so she ran.   She ran, head-down in the dark, as hard as she could, inviting the sting of branches and leaves across her face, welcoming pain and exhaustion. 

 SnailEater’s voice followed her.

 “Come back!” he sang, shifting his frequency down-range to follow her.

 “I cannot! You saw what I did.  I can never come back!”

"He desired you to come back!" 

"I cannot!" she screamed. 

 Horror was overcoming aggression, and so she kept running, fleeing the ruin she had made of everything she loved. It had happened _so fast!_ So _fast,_ in a single heartbeat, in a single sleepy moment, she’d destroyed so _much!_ The damage was done! In one strike of her claws, she’d destroyed it all.

 She stopped under a tree, gasping for breath.  Every fibre of her hide was crawling in shame.

 “You must come back! He is leaking out of his eyes!” SnailEater called. 

 _“Leaking out of his eyes?”_   she cried in horror.   “I hurt his _eyes,_ too?”  She sprang forward.

 A sleeping nightmare had turned into a waking nightmare between one heartbeat and the next! Everyone had warned her never to fall asleep with her human close by. Everyone had warned her, but it had been so nice, so comfortable, and she had let herself sleep. She had indulged herself, and now look what her indulgence had done!

 He would never trust her again, TravelsOverWater had warned her.  Humans never forgot being hurt.  FirstHuman had been drifting away, and this would cement it! This would spur him away!

 She dropped her head, and picked up speed. She would put distance between herself and her old life. She would go far away, so that she could not try to make him stay. She would go far away, so that she would not know precisely when he left the forest. She would go away, to where there were no Real People, and where no-one could pity her for her loss.

 “He desires me to summon you back!” SnailEater was screaming at the limit of his range.

 “No! The damage is done! Tell him he can go away!”

 “Go where?”

 “Wherever he desires to go!   Tell him I release him.  He is free, he can go back to his old life!”

 SnailEater shouted again, but his voice was breaking up into the distance, and she could not hear him. She ran, and kept running.

 

………………………….

 

“Another,” Owen said to the barman.

 The man poured him another shot without a word, and Owen sat and looked at it. It gleamed in the steamy light of the bar. The music in the bar was just an annoying noise around his head, and the voices around him seemed far away.

 Owen was lost in his own miserable little bubble, and he was drunk. He didn’t care. If you couldn’t get plastered at the break-up of a six-year relationship, when could you?

 He’d broken his sober streak tonight, but since it was already broken, he may as well break it completely. Tomorrow, he could start a new sober streak from scratch. Tomorrow, he was going to start a whole lot of things over from scratch, but tonight Owen was going to get drunk.

 Nobody had seen StripeSide for three full days. Nobody knew where she was. She’d fled into the darkness, and didn’t come back.

For three full days, Owen had waited for her to come back, and then, unable to stand the careful way everyone was not staring at him, he walked into San Judas Tadeo, alone.

It was all over. She knew the truth. She’d finally figured it out.  She had rejected him.

Owen would leave.  He couldn't stay here, knowing that his own beautiful Blue didn't want him.  He would go back to civilization.  He walked away from La Patasola, and into San Judas Tadeo, alone. 

San Judas Tedeo was a dump, to be sure.  It was a tiny one-horse-town with a single church and a small clinic but at least it had a cantina.  Owen walked out of the forest, and straight into the cantina without stopping, driven by the intolerable ache of grief in his heart.

Maybe a shot of tequila could loosen the hard knot of pain inside his chest. He’d carried that knot for three days, and it wasn’t going away. Maybe a shot of tequila, neat, could relax his self-control, so that his tears could flow freely.  Maybe tequile would give him the strength to turn his back on the rainforest and walk away.   But he’d sunk the tequila, and the tears had not come. 

 Another tequila, then.

 And another.

 And another.

 By the time he realized he was drunk, he was more miserable than he’d ever felt in his life, and _still_ the tears wouldn’t come.  The pain was a hard tight knot around his heart.  If he couldn’t drink it away, or cry it away, he must talk it away.  The knot had to come out.

 “She left me,” he said to the shot-glass. “She ran off, and left me.  Not a word of explanation. Just jumped up, and left.”

 He picked the shot glass carefully up in his fingers – it seemed to have grown smaller and more slippery as the night went on – and gulped it down. The fumes hit his sinuses, and he winced as his throat protested.

 “If she could just run away like that, then she wasn’t worth it in the first place,” the bartender said. 

 “Not this one,” Owen said. “She’s special.”

 “Beautiful?”

 “Oh, yeah. You have no idea. I used to just sit and _look_ at her, and think, _wow,_ look at _that_. Gorgeous. Beautiful big eyes. Lovely long wavy tail.”  

 He choked on the word 'ta _il,’_   but the bartender didn't notice.  Owen pointed with his finger mutely at his glass.

The bartender poured him another drink.  

 “Ah, my friend, it’s always the beautiful ones who know how to break a man’s heart.” 

He screwed the cap back on the bottle, shaking his head wisely as if he knew all about the ways of beautiful dinosaurs.  The trade in San Judas Tadeo didn’t call much on the barman’s time, so he had nothing better to do tonight than lean on the bar and listen to the American stranger who seemed hellbent on drinking himself into the linoleum.

 “Beautiful.  So beautiful.  And smart!” Owen said. “She’s so smart!  I can’t even tell you how smart. Smarter than _me,_ that’s for sure.  I'm just a dumb Squid with a training clicker...”

 He pointed into the shot glass, and the barman filled it up again.   Owen sank that one as well, and gasped for breath. When he could breathe again clearly, he shook his head.

 “I knew it would happen, y’know? I knew one day, she'll figure it out, but I never expected it to happen so _fast_. But just like that, she’s _gone._ And now that she’s gone, what have I got left?  Who am I without her?  I have nowhere left to go.  I’m just a dumb  Squid with a clicker, that’s all.”

 “Ah, some women…” the barman said, soothingly. He shook his head, and his eyes caught sight of someone coming up behind Owen’s shoulder. His face chilled, and he pushed himself upright against the bar.

 “ _Hola,_ ” the newcomer greeted Owen. “I am going to join you.” He pushed himself up onto the chair next to Owen.

 “Misery likes company,” Owen said. He picked up his shot glass to raise it to the stranger in salute, but knocked it over instead.

 The stranger reached across, and turned the glass the right way around. “You seem sad. Let me buy you a drink, my friend,” he said. “You. Pour us both a tequila.”

“ _Señor_ ,” the barman said. Owen looked up at his face, and squinted. The barman was staring at the stranger, and there was a strange look on his face. He had picked up the tequila, and he was holding the bottle in front of himself like a crucifix.

 “Pour the tequila, yes?” the stranger said to the barman. “We can’t let our new friend sit here and drink alone.”

 “Maybe,” the barman said, hesitantly, “Maybe he’s already had enough to drink, Señor?”

 “You’re not telling me I can’t have a drink with my new friend?”

 “No, Señor. I didn’t say that.”

“Good man. Put the bottle down, and forget you saw him here tonight.”

 Owen Grady focused his eyes on the barman, but he had put down the bottle of tequila, and he was backing away cautiously.

 The stranger picked up the bottle, and poured Owen another shot of tequila. Owen was still pondering the stranger’s strangeness, but the tequila was in front of him now, and he drank it. He winced at the taste, biting at his throat.

 “We’re all friends here, aren’t we?” the stranger asked him.

 What was he supposed to reply to that? “I’m Owen.”

 “Yes, I know. Here, have a look at my business card?” The stranger took out his wallet from his pocket, and drew out a business card. He gave it to Owen, who took it and read it. The stranger’s name was Rodrigo.

 “Pleased to meet you,” Owen said.

“Señor! ” the barman protested. “You can’t just… Please...” 

“Is there a problem?” the stranger asked the barman. “I hope there’s not going to be a problem. La Leona wouldn’t like to hear if there was another problem, would she?  We only just sorted out the last problem, didn’t we? We don’t want to have to go through all that unpleasantness again.”

 “No,” the barman said.

 The conversation had taken a strange turn, but Owen couldn’t focus on what he had just heard. Even after a year in Colombia , he couldn’t manage subtle and Spanish and alcohol all at the same time.   He tried to give the business card back, but Rodrigo waved it away.

 “Keep it,” Rodrigo said. “Here, have another tequila.”

 “Maybe I’ve had enough tequila,” Owen said, feeling suddenly uneasy, but he accepted the tequila he was given, and drank.

 “Are you here by yourself?”

 “I’m all alone,” Owen said, putting down the shot glass. “Blue’s gone.”

 “Blue?”

 “She left me. I don’t even know where she is now.”  

 “Oh, your girlfriend,” the stranger said.

 “She’s not my girlfriend,” Owen said. He knew he was saying things that he should not, but the words had just slipped out. The room was beginning to turn around him.

 “She’s going to be the least of your problems soon,” Rodrigo confided, and Owen accepted that.  

 “It’s all over. All done. I gave up my job; my family; my friends; everything. I thought, this is going to be my world now. Me, and her, and our big Jurassic adventure in Colombia. Now it’s all over. All gone. And you know the worst thing?”

 “No, tell me the worst thing?”

 “I would do it all again! If you gave me another manila envelope and said, Mr Grady we have a job for you, I’d take it. I’ve lost everything, and I want to start at the beginning, and do it all over again … I want her back so bad…”

 The tears were welling up in his eyes, but suddenly he felt very ill. If he started crying, he was going to be sick. His mouth had gone very dry, and the room seemed to be turning around him, wide and bright as a casino. He could feel the eyes of everyone in the bar on him. The cantina had gone very quiet. Even the music had been turned off, and the silence was very big.

 “I feel dizzy,” he complained.   

 “You have had enough.”

 “Me too,” Owen said. “Wait, what?”

 “You’d better come with me.”

 “Okay. Maybe I should.”

 A small voice in the back of his mind was shouting that he was doing something stupid, but the voice was not in control any more.  

 “Here, give me your arm, let me help you up.”

 “Okay.” Owen tried to stand, but the room was turning. His legs were too heavy under him, and he couldn’t quite walk properly.

 “I’m dizzy,” he complained.

 “Inigo,” Rodrigo said. “Take his other arm, let’s get him out to the car.”

 Owen felt his arm being draped over another stranger’s shoulder. He wanted to ask where the second stranger had come from, but he didn’t know how.   This was a bad idea, and he knew it. This was a terrible idea, but he couldn’t bring himself to resist. This was wrong, he told himself, but he allowed himself to be led towards the door.  

 “Where are you taking him?” the barman said.

 “That’s for La Leona to know, and you to wonder!” the stranger said. “Get out of my way, unless you want to come with him!”

 The barman stepped aside. Owen focused his eyes on the barman’s face. His expression was mutinous, but his head was low. He didn’t look at Owen.

 “Where are we going?” he asked, as he was led on wobbly legs through the door. He knew he should fight them, but he followed, helplessly.

 “You’ll see.”

 …………………

 Maggie woke up, as she heard the sentry call back to the camp, and the commander answer. She sat up. Her movement woke Roy , as the chain around their wrists moved.

 “What’s going on?” he asked, sleepily.

 “The others are coming back.”

 Roy sat up, sleepily, rubbing his eyes. Matteo was still asleep, his face pillowed on his hands. They’d spent an uncomfortable night, sleeping on the ground, chained together so that they couldn’t escape. The morning mist was still drifting in the trees, but their kidnappers were getting up around them.

 Maggie looked around them.

 After just a few days in the forest, the trees seemed unending – infinite ranks of identical green in every direction. No matter which way one turned, the view was the same; trees without end. Endless heat. Endless insects. No roads, no landmarks, no sense of direction or movement; just the enormous weight of biomass, for thousands of miles in every direction. The tallest trees blocked almost all of the sun, casting permanent gloom in most directions.   It was like being trapped underground, and Maggie was already finding it claustrophobic.

 Around them, the guerillas were making breakfast. Tin utensils clanked, over a fire that dribbled insipid smoke into the mist.

 Pedro, the commander of the kidnappers gestured to one of his men, and then pointed at Maggie. A minute later, the man came over, holding plastic bowls. “Food,” he said, holding them out.

 “Thank you.” Maggie took her bowl. “Eat up,” she whispered to Roy and Matteo. “We’ll be moving soon.”

 “What, again?” Roy grumbled.

 “We might be walking every day for months,” Maggie warned. “They’ll keep us moving, to make us harder to find. Eat every scrap. You’ll need the energy.”

 She was hungry too, she realized. She shovelled the food into her mouth, and watched from under the veil of her hair, taking notes in her head, as if she was on just another assignment.

 She had counted ten kidnappers, she told herself; including the two who had travelled into San Judas Tadeo yesterday. They were busy now, buckling on their webbing and body-armour. Weapons were being checked, magazines loaded, bandoliers slung. They wore an assortment of mismatched uniforms. The effect of all that olive-green was that they faded into the foliage, like the predators they really were. Ten minutes after they moved on, there would be no trace that they were here, Maggie thought. Colombian guerillas and gangs had been hiding in the rainforest for fifty years; they had plenty of practice.

 She was aware that she was hiding behind her journalistic calm to prevent her panic from rising. This was no assignment. She wasn’t reporting on a story – she was the story.

 These men weren’t even pretending to be brave freedom-fighters, fighting for some or other noble ideal. These men weren’t going to pose for photographs and explain why their violence was justified for readers of Newsweek. They didn’t care that Maggie was a journalist; they cared only that someone would pay a ransom to get her back. They were criminals, pure and simple, from a brutalised and crime-infested country.

 And they had done all of this before. Thousands of people had been kidnapped in Colombia , just like this.

 There was a burst of shouting, and the two missing guerillas came trudging through the narrow path between the trees. They were leading two men with them.

 One of them was just a boy. He was thin, and he looked frightened.

 The other was definitely not Colombian, and Maggie sat up straighter as she caught sight of him. He was handsome, in a sweaty, stubbled way, with tousled brown hair, and big beefy shoulders. He looked as if he was the sort of man who usually walked with a macho swagger, but right now he was wobbling on his feet, as if he was walking in his sleep.

 “ _Hull_ -o,” Roy said, appreciatively, as he caught sight of the newcomer.

 “Sit there,” one of the guerillas ordered, pushing on the gringo’s broad shoulder and pointing to Maggie. He blinked at her, as if wondering what she was, but walked over obediently and sat down. Maggie wondered if he was drugged.

 “Who the hell is this?” Pedro demanded. He stamped up, pointing his finger at the gringo.

 “Him?” Rodrigo gestured with both hands at the gringo, grinning. “We found _him_ in San Judas Tadeo. A few drops of _burundanga_ , and he followed us here like a lamb. Isn’t he wonderful?”

 “You were sent to get _him!_ ” Pedro raged, pointing at the boy. “You were told to go straight there, grab _him,_ and come back! Not grab some random Yankee from the street! My God! How hard is it to get you idiots to follow a direct order? La Leona is going to kill you!”

 “No-no-no! Don’t you recognise him?” the guerilla said. “This is the man on those posters! The one that American company will pay two million dollars for!”

 “This? This is Owen Grady?” Pedro asked.

 “Two million dollars, captain! They’ll pay, no questions asked! La Leona doesn’t even need to know about it!”

 Grady had definitely been drugged with something. He was sitting and staring around him, with a dazed expression, as if he didn’t understand the conversation was about him.

 “Are you sure this is him?” Pedro murmured. He went down on one knee next to Grady, and put his fingers into the brown hair to pull up Grady’s head. Grady blinked sleepy grey-green eyes back at him.

 “Owen Grady?” Pedro asked, pushing up his sunglasses so that he could see his expression clearly.

 “Yeah?” the stranger agreed, sleepily.

 “What the _hell_ did you steal from InGen?”

 Grady smiled, drunkenly, as if he thought he was being clever. “You don’t steal _them_ , bro. They steal _us._ That’s what their name _means_ in Latin.”

 “And now we’ve stolen you,” Pedro said.

 “That’s probably a mistake,” Grady said, serenely.

 “WhY?”

 “La Patasola will come to get me…”

 Maggie and Roy looked at each other, and Roy ’s arched eyebrows rose up his forehead. “Vampires?” Roy asked.

 Pedro put his sunglasses back on. “It’s the drug talking.” Pedro let go of Grady’s hair, and stood up. “All right. Rodrigo, Inigo, you did well. Eat. The rest of you! We’re moving in one hour! Pack up, and let’s go! We have a long march today!”

 ……………………….

  Owen was walking.

 He was walking, and looking around himself, and wondering where on earth he was.

 His body was slick with sweat, and his feet were hot and tired inside his boots. He had been walking for a long time, he sensed, but he had no idea how long.

 His left wrist was locked into a long chain. He was linked to four others, and he could feel the bobbing on the chain as they trudged over the rough ground. He knew he had been walking with them for a long time, but he had no idea who they were, or where they had come from.

 There were other men walking on either side of him – men in jungle fatigues, carrying guns.

 He was chained to a group of strangers. How the hell had he got here? Who were these people? Where were the raptors?

 He fought to remember. He had been in the cantina in San Judas Tadeo, drinking, drowning his sorrows like every possible stupid cliché.

 How the hell had he got from there to here? Walking in single file, in the forest, chained, surrounded by strangers with guns…

 He stopped dead. The person behind him walked into him.

 “Oh God, I’ve been kidnapped,” he said aloud.

 “What was your first clue, Sherlock?” asked a man’s voice, with a dry English accent.

 Owen didn’t say anything more. There didn’t seem anything to say. He just walked, and looked around

 He was the fourth in the row of hostages. At the head of the line was an older man, dark hair turning to steel, who walked with a slight limp. Behind the old Englishman was a young woman, with long dark hair, in khaki trousers and a multi-pocketed vest. Behind the woman, right in front of Owen, was a teenaged boy, who snuffled miserably as he walked.

 Owen turned around, and saw that there was another young man walking behind him. He met Owen’s gaze, and flicked the corners of his mouth up and down in a shy smile.

 Owen had a vague idea that he had been talking to these people, earlier. The American woman was Maggie, the old Englishman was Roy . The kid was Cristian. The man behind him was Matteo. He could remember their names, although he could not remember how he knew them them.

  _So_ , he thought, _a boy, a woman, an old guy, me, and another man._

 He couldn’t escape into the forest, unless he persuaded them _all_ to go with him. He couldn’t get the chain off his wrist.

 StripeSide could snap off the chain in a single bite. She had a bite strength of thousands of pounds, evolved to chomp through the bones of her huge sauropod prey. He would just have to put up with the chain, until she came huffing and puffing to get him back.

 Except that she wouldn’t, would she? She’d left the lair. Nobody in La Patasola knew where she was. She’d rejected Owen.

 And nobody else in La Patasola would come for him. TravelsOverWater had forbidden it.

 TravelsOverWater was the queen raptor of La Patasola, and the queen made the rules. La Patasola never came out of the forest – ever. They traded with some of the Indians, and some of the _campesinos_ , but they never, ever showed themselves to outsiders. Coming to help him would endanger the very existence of La Patasola.

 Owen wouldn’t want that, anyway. He might have lost his own dyad, but he was not going to endanger the raptors. He’d have to get _himself_ out of this mess…

 He was sure that he could. He’d been living in the forest for a year, and Barry, Maria and the other locals had been teaching him how to survive. And he could handle himself in a fight. He didn’t need anyone’s help; he just had to get this damned chain off.

 Funny, if you thought about it. All those years training the raptors, and he had been on the outside of the bars, and she had been inside. Now _he_ was the one in chains, and _she_ was free. That was good. That was _damn_ good.

 He could almost hear Barry’s grunt of Gallic mockery. He laughed, joylessly, under his breath, and kept walking.

 …………………….

 Under the trees, another argument was breaking out…

 “I’m hungry,” Copper complained.

 “Me too,” FireMountain agreed.  

 “I want to go back to the pack.” Copper sat down. She changed her colour from green to peach, to match the flowers behind her.  

 WoodAsh sneered at her brother and sister. “And confess that we could not hunt for ourselves?” she asked, keeping her colour dark green. “We’re not hatchlings any more!”

 “We _could_ hunt for ourselves, if we’d gone somewhere else, but not here,” Copper said. “There’s nothing to hunt around here. The humans in the town drive all the prey away.”

 “We came here looking for cats!” WoodAsh sprang at them both, her neck snaking. She snapped at Copper. “You both said you wanted a cat! And cats live where humans are!”

 “Cats are delicious,” FireMountain said. He looked at his other sister and waited for her to respond.

 “Yes, cats _are_ delicious,” Copper said. “But we haven’t _had_ a cat, have we? No. We’ve had a _third_ of a cat. A third of a cat, each.”

 “A third of a cat each,” FireMountain said. “A third of an anaconda, and we’ve eaten rats.”

 “Too many rats,” Copper agreed.

 “I’m _tired_ of rats.” FireMountain changed colour as he spoke, his flanks lightening from the green of WoodAsh, to the peach colour of Copper. The colour flowed across his hide.

 “I say we should go back to the pack,” Copper said, seeing that her brother’s colour now agreed with hers. “We shouldn’t have come here. We shouldn’t have left TreeFallsDown. Your plan was stupid, WoodAsh.”  

 “ _You’re_ stupid!” WoodAsh snapped, nettled.

 “You’re a stupid _alpha!_ ” Copper said. “I want to be alpha this time!”

 “Why can’t I be alpha this time?” FireMountain said.

 “You can’t be alpha, you’re too small!” Copper said.

 “I’m big enough!” FireMountain complained. “I’m bigger than StripeSide, now!”

 “ _Everyone_ is bigger than StripeSide,” WoodAsh said.

 “Yes!” Copper snapped at WoodAsh, “But _she’s_ scary, and _you’re_ not! She’s a real alpha, and you’re not!”

 “I am the alpha! _”_

 “I want to be the alpha now!” Copper snapped at her. WoodAsh whirled and sprang at Copper, and a second later they were fighting, clutching each other with their forehands and trying to kick each other with their killing-claws.

 “If you’re going to _be_ like that, I’m going away!” FireMountain said, annoyed, and changed his colour away from Copper’s peach. He set his colouring back to the black-and-orange of his name, and stalked away from his sisters.

 Let them fight! His sisters had been fighting over who got to be alpha for as long as he could remember. All they did was fight each other. Everything in life was one long competition between them. He was bored with listening to them fight, he was bored with their immaturity, and he wanted to go back to the Pack. He shouldn’t have followed WoodAsh at all, when she suggested sneaking away from the other Cloud People and go off on their own.

 He trotted down the path, branches brushing over his back. He really was bigger than StripeSide now. Not that that made much of a difference, because StripeSide was still scary, and her sister WingWatch was more scary still.

 FireMountain stopped on a stone outcrop that had a nice view of the valley, and turned himself the same colour as the stone under him. The ability to change colour meant that the Clouds could emerge from the trees whenever they wanted without being seen. He sat down on a rock, and looked down at the jungle.  

 Odd. He could smell FirstHuman up here.

 For a moment he thought that FirstHuman was somewhere in the below him, and then he realized that the scent was old. He turned his head, triangulating the scent.

 There were humans on the opposite slope, somewhere, out of sight. Their scents were drifting across the gorge, carried on the breeze, which was why it smelled old and flat.

 “Hullo,” he said to himself, “What is FirstHuman doing here?”

 He stood up on his hind legs, lifting his head as high as he could. Yes, that was certainly FirstHuman. He had known that scent his whole life. But he didn’t recognise any other of the human scents. And there was no Real Person with him. Where was StripeSide? FirstHuman was alone with strangers, and the strangers were not Pack.

 He turned his head. “Sisters!” he called. “Here is something strange! Come up here, and see!”

…………………………..

 

 At midday , the file stopped for a meal, and to sleep off the heat of the day. The kidnappers lounged around. There seemed to be ten of them, altogether, he guessed. The older man with the dark sunglasses seemed to be giving orders. The hostages sat in a line, their backs to a tree, drinking water from a canteen, and waiting to be fed.

 “How did I get here?” he asked Maggie.

 “You walked here.”

 “Why can’t I remember?”

 “You were drugged with Burundanga,” she said. “Scopolamine. It turns people into zombies.”

 “I thought that was just an urban legend!” he said.

 “I guess it’s not. I’m Maggie Montroe, by the way. Freelance journalist.”

 “Owen Grady.” He gave her his free hand to shake.

 “This is my cameraman, Roy. Cristian over here is the son of the Mayor of San Judas Tadeo. Matteo next to you is our driver.”

 “Pleased to meet you,” Roy said. He had a crisp English accent, as if he’d modelled himself after David Attenborough. Matteo had a shy smile.

 “Your cameraman?” Owen asked.

 “Not any more,” Roy said. “The bastards have taken my camera. They filmed our ransom demands with our own equipment, if you can believe the cheek of some people!”

 “Now that’s just adding insult to injury,” Owen grinned.

 “You can say _that_ again,” Roy said.  

 Owen stared around the camp. The kidnappers were lying around, resting their boots.   The antenna of a small portable radio was extended, and Colombian music jangled in the hot air.

 “Ah, at least we have music,” Roy said, sarcastically. “All’s well, now.”

 Maggie reached into her pocket, and pulled something out. She rubbed it in her palm. Owen caught a glimpse of something black and shiny between her grimy fingers.

 “What’s that?” he asked.

 She showed him her palm.

 “It’s a gastrolith,” Maggie said. “A dinosaur’s gizzard stone.”

 “A fossil?” he asked, keeping his voice calm.

 His blood had run cold in his veins. He could bet he knew _exactly_ which raptor was dumb enough to cough up her gizzard stones where someone could find it! It _had_ to be SlidingRocks, because she’d done it before! That _idiot!_

 “Not this one,” she said. “This one is only a few months old.”

 “For real? Aren’t we kinda far from Jurassic World?” Owen said, squinting his eyes, and schooling his face into an expression of disbelief.  

 “That’s what _I_ said,” Roy sighed.  

 “There have been stories going around for _years_ ,” Maggie said, defensively. “About velociraptors that escaped from the old Jurassic Park, and went feral. Well, I don’t think they’re just stories. I think they’re out here. Dinosaurs in the rainforest.”

 Oh, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!

 Owen could have screamed with frustration. She was here looking for _exactly_ what he was trying to hide! Of all the people he had to be chained next to, she just _had_ to be a journalist!

 “You’re wasting your time,” Owen said, keeping his voice as calm as he could, even though he wanted to slam his fists against the nearest tree. He would damn well make _sure_ she was wasting her time!

 “That’s what _I_ said,” Roy said, again, pitch-perfect.

 “This stone is proof that they’re here,” Maggie insisted.  

 “It’s just an urban legend,” Owen said. “Like La Patasola. Or the _hupia._ It’s nonsense.”

 “Like Burundanga is an urban legend?” she asked, grinning at him. She closed her fist around the stone, and put it back into her pocket. “The velociraptors are here. I am going to find them, and film them.”

 “We need to get out of this mess, first,” Roy told her. “Unless you have a few million quid in your pocket along with that thing, we’re stuck here until your insurance pays out.”

 “Here comes the boss,” Matteo the Driver interrupted. “Pedro.”

 “And here comes my equipment,” Roy grumbled.

 The man in the sunglasses was walking over to them. As he came, a few of his men swung away to follow him. One of them was carrying a portable video-camera. He fussed with it for a second, and then a little red light blinked on.

 “You,” Pedro said, pointing to Owen. “Get up.”

 Owen got up. The chain around his wrist rattled heavily. The kidnapper with the camera pointed it at him.

 “Tell the camera who you are.”

 Owen looked into the glassy depths of the camera. “My name is Owen Grady. I’m an American citizen.”

 “Owen Grady, who worked for InGen, yes?”

 “Oh, crap,” Owen said. His day was just getting better and better.

 “Yes?” Pedro barked.

 “Yes,” Owen sighed. “I am Owen Grady, who worked for InGen. Up until last year, I used to work at –”

 “Good enough! Sit down.”

 Owen stayed on his feet. “You have to let me go,” he said. “You’re making a _big_ mistake.”  

 Pedro had been turning away, but he turned back. “Let you go?”

 “I’m giving you fair warning,” Owen said, into the black mirrors of Pedro’s sunglasses. “I’m probably the _last_ person you want to take hostage. You should just let me go.”

 “Let you go?” Pedro said, incredulously. “We’re not letting you go. You’re worth two million dollars!”

 “Me? Two million?”

 “InGen has put a price on your head, my friend. Two million dollars. I don’t know what you stole from them, but they want to talk to you, bad. And we’re not letting you go until we get our money.”

 “This isn’t about the money,” Owen said. “This is about your men getting killed. I don’t want to see innocent people die. Just let me go, and nobody will get hurt.”

 “Are you _threatening_ me?” Pedro sneered, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

 “I’m not threatening you, I’m warning you. My friends are going to come looking for me, and it’s best that you’re not around when they get here. Just let me go. I’ll walk back to San Judas Tadeo, and nobody needs to know.”

 “You don’t understand how this works, do you?” Pedro shouted, losing his temper. He pulled out his pistol and pointed it at Owen’s head in one sweeping movement.

 “Whoa!” Owen said, freezing. His career had taught him physical self-control – vital when training animals that would attack at the first sign of weakness. He didn’t jerk away. He kept his gaze steady and his voice even.  “Easy, there.”

 There was a pistol pointed at his left eye, inches away. The muzzle yawned into his eyeball as if it was the size of a 3-inch. He was suddenly sure that the slightest movement he made would make it go off.

 “You don’t make trouble!” Pedro’s voice shouted from behind the pistol. There was no expression in the sunglasses. “You make trouble, and I’ll shoot you! You’re worth two million alive, but I’ve made two million before, and I can make it again!”

 “Okay,” Owen said. “We’re good.”

 “Sit down, and shut up!”

 He kept his hands up, and lowered himself back down to the ground. The barrel of the pistol went away from his face, and he could suddenly breathe again. He knew better than most what a pistol like that could do to a man’s head.

 Pedro turned away.

 “Him!” Pedro said, pointing with the pistol at the driver, Matteo. “Unchain him.”

 “What? No, wait!” Matteo said. “What are you doing? Wait, I don’t want to. Wait.”

 But the kidnappers ignored him. The key was brought, and the lock around his wrist was unlocked. He was pulled up to his feet.

 Pedro stood in front of him, and stared at him. “What are you worth?” he demanded.

 “Me? Me? I’m nothing! I’m nobody! I’m just the driver!”

 “Then you’re not worth anything.” Pedro pointed the pistol at him.

 Matteo’s eyes went wide, and his hands came up. _“No-no-no I won’t tell anyone! I swear it, I swear, on my mother’s life, please don’t…!”_

 “We arranged to feed _four_ prisoners, not five,” Pedro said.  

 The pistol cracked, painfully loud.

 Owen flinched, and felt something pat his face gently. Maggie and Cristian screamed, and Roy shouted. Birds screamed and beat the air to get away from the shot. Matteo’s body collapsed, and thumped heavily against the tree as if somebody had thrown a sack of meat.

 Owen opened his eyes immediately. There was the smell of blood in the air – familiar from years around velociraptors. He didn’t need to look at Matteo to know the young man was dead. He didn’t need to touch his face, to know that some of Matteo’s blood had sprayed onto his cheek.

 _“Matteo!”_ Maggie was sobbing. Cristian had folded himself into a ball.

 “What the hell did you do that for?” Owen shouted, looking up at Pedro.

 Pedro looked down at him, remote as an insect behind the sunglasses. He still held the gun at his side, index finger along the trigger guard. “He wasn’t worth the trouble.”  

 “He was just the driver, for fuck’s sake! Look at him! He was just the driver! You didn’t need to shoot him!”

 “You’re going to make trouble, Grady?” Pedro warned, and he brought the pistol forward.  

 Owen hissed, his lips curling. “No trouble,” he grated, through gritted teeth. He could feel himself shaking inside with anger; cold and hard.   His fists were knotted so tightly they burned.

 “Good. I _knew_ you looked like an intelligent man,” Pedro said, misunderstanding completely. He turned and walked away. “Let’s _move!”_ he shouted to his men. “Siesta is _over!_ We’ve got a long way to march today! Let’s go!”

 Owen watched him leave. He touched his beard, and his fingers came away coated in blood. “No trouble at all,” he said to himself. “You’ve had your fair warning …”

 ………………………..

 

FireMountain jumped at the sound of the shot, making the leaves under him crunch. His claws jerked at the ground in shocked reflex. FireMountain could see Copper, blended in perfectly under a fall of ferns, and her bloodheat flashed her horror so sharply it was a miracle the humans didn’t see it.

 The humans had been blundering along a path, in that clumping way they had, instead of sliding through the trees. It had been simple to guess their course, and get ahead of them. It had been simple to hide in the foliage alongside the path. They didn’t even need to hide their bloodheat – humans couldn’t see bloodheat at all.

 And now, a human lay dead! FireMountain could smell human blood. A human had been killed, right next to FirstHuman! The law of the Real People had been broken! One did not kill humans! _Meat, Not!_

 The law of TravelsOverWater had been broken, but the human was turning away, as if nothing was wrong. He was singing commands to the other humans in the group, waving his arms, and they were moving to obey. FirstHuman was getting up, and FireMountain saw the glitter of the chain at his side.  

 “Right,” WoodAsh decided. She bunched the muscles of her hind-legs, ready to leap from her hiding-place. “I’ll take the ones on the left, you take the ones in the middle, FireMountain takes the ones on the right.”

 “No!” FireMountain cried out. “There are too many weapons! We cannot!”

 “But they have FirstHuman!”

 “They have FirstHuman!  Exactly!” FireMountain said, urgently. “They can’t have taken him by accident! He’s the bond-mate of an alpha of the Real People! They must know who he is! If we show ourselves, they’ll shoot him, immediately!”

 “He’s right,” Copper said. “If they start shooting lead pellets around, they could shoot FirstHuman.”

 “We cannot leap,” FireMountain said. “Not yet.”

 “Not yet,” WoodAsh agreed. “Not now. Not here.”

 There was a long silence. The humans were getting up. They were going to move off, and leave their dead behind them. FirstHuman and his fellow captives – now just four of them – were being pulled to their feet. The human party started walking off through the trees, back on the path again.

 The flies came down, drawn to the smell of blood. The three Clouds watched and waited, until the sound and the scent of the humans had gone away, and they were alone.

 WoodAsh stood up, and stalked out into the clearing. The grass had been beaten down where the humans had been sitting. They had thrown sand over their fire, but the stink of ash still clashed horribly with a sweet fragrance of blood.

 FireMountain followed his sisters, and stood looking down at the dead human. He’d never seen a dead human before. The human was lying on his back, eyes open, with a hole in his forehead. He smelled remarkably similar to a dead pig.

 “They just left him here,” FireMountain said.

 “They didn’t even eat him!” Copper said. “What did they do that for, if they weren’t even going to _eat_ him? What a waste of meat!”

 “They didn’t kill him for the meat,” FireMountain said, staring down at the dead human. “They killed him to make him dead. These are not like our humans.”

 “We can’t leave FirstHuman with humans who kill other humans!” Woodash said. “They are enemies!”

 “But how do we get him away from them?”  

 “Does anyone have a plan?”

 “We must find StripeSide, and tell her what we have seen,” WoodAsh decided. “She will know what to do.”

 “StripeSide will blame us,” FireMountain said. “Maybe we should find TravelsOverWater?”

 “No! StripeSide will know what to do,” WoodAsh insisted. “StripeSide knows how to fight.

 “StripeSide is scary,” FireMountain said. “And FirstHuman is her bond-mate, anyway. She has the right to decide.”

 “Two of us must follow FirstHuman, and one will go to find StripeSide.”

 “I’ll go,” FireMountain said.

 “You’re too small,” Copper said.

 “I’m the fastest runner, and you both know it,” FireMountain said. He whirled, his tail lashing. “I should go! I am going! I have gone!”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Baby raptors A, C and G, FYI.


	4. The New Queen

StripeSide had been alone for four days.  

She had run from the lair until the sun rose above the forest canopy. She had run, and run, until she realized that she was entirely alone. She couldn’t smell or hear any of the Real People around her. She was alone. She might as well be the only Real Person left in the world.

She had been alone for four days, and she was starting to realize that she did not know how. She had never been truly alone before. Even when she had been a tiny hatchling, orphaned and frightened, she had not been alone. FirstHuman had put her inside his shirt, and carried her about, close to his chest. She did not know how to be alone.  She did not know how to _exist,_ alone.

She could command alone. That isolation was her duty as alpha. She knew the burden of sole command. She knew how to be completely responsible for the safety of her pack.

But there was no pack, here. You couldn’t be alpha of nothing. Who were you, without your pack? Without your bond-mate? Who would tell you who you were, if you were alone? A Real Person was only a Real Person through other Real People.  

And now, she had been alone for four whole days.  Four days was a long time. She had seen no-one else in four days, and her mind was starting to supply them.  She had not seen another Real Person for four days, and now she could feel eyes, watching her from the trees. She could hear the distant clatter of the human’s electronic communication, and her mind was beginning to hear voices speaking in the static. She saw the dapples of warm sunlight, and mistook them for the bloodheat of People who weren’t there. She sniffed the air, and she smelled the scent of FirstHuman in the empty breeze.

Voices, and ghosts… madness was solitude.

The Mad Giant Person had been utterly alone – and she had been utterly mad. If StripeSide went mad like the Mad Giant Person, would she even know she was mad, without anyone to tell her? She had been hunting, and sleeping, and running in silence for four days, and none of those four days seemed real to her. She might have dreamed them all. She might have dreamed herself. She began to fear that she might simply cease to exist, if she stayed alone for much longer. She might fade out into the ambient temperature of the air, like the a dying embers of a fire.

There was nothing for it. She would have to go back. Four days she had been alone, and she could feel her mind eroding. Four days were longer than anyone could withstand. Surely not even a human could be alone for that long without madness!

She must go back, and face the gazes of the Real People. They would all know what had happened to her. They would all know by now that StripeSide had hurt her human, and driven him away. They would look at her, and they would pity her, and they would talk in restrained voices behind solid objects, so that she did not hear them.

But she had to go back and face their pity.  Madness was solitude. Solitude was death.  For the rest of her life, she would be StripeSide, the Real Person who had lost her bond-mate.

She had wanted to rule the Pack one day. She had wanted to lead them to permanent safety. She had wanted to lead the Real People back into the world they had lost millions of years ago. But not now. All of those dreams had foundered. She couldn’t even hold onto her own bond-mate – how would she _ever_ be able to rule a hundred Real People? Her dreams were too much for her. Pitiful, pathetic StripeSide. Silly StripeSide, with her immature dreams. StripeSide, the failed alpha...

But if she stayed alone like this, she would fade to nothing and disappear, like a bubble of soap floating through the air and vanishing unnoticed.   She would have to go back. She had been alone for four days, and surely that was as much as anyone could stand.

She would go back to WingWatch first. WingWatch had known her since they were both fuzzy feathered hatchlings, play-fighting in the sawdust. WingWatch knew every secret of StripeSide’s heart. WingWatch knew FirstHuman, and she knew what it was to bond with a human. WingWatch would pity her, but at least she would not sneer at her.

She turned, and went to find WingWatch.

She had come far, in her four days of solitude, and it took her all day to jog in the direction of WingWatch’s nest. She rested at midday, with the sun overhead, dreaming of FirstHuman, and when she woke, she could still feel his touch on her face. She sprang to her feet and ran on, late into the night. Madness was solitude. She would reach WingWatch, and then she would not be alone, and then she would not fade away into madness.

At first, when she heard her name called, she thought it was just her mind supplying another ghost voice.  She stopped in a patch of moonlight to listen, curious to know what _this_ voice wanted her to do... 

A few minutes later, she heard it again.

_“Stripe…Siiiide…!”_

_That was no ghost!_ The call was deep, and long. Even at this range, she recognised the voice of her sister. WingWatch had the finest singing voice of all the Real People. She sang every day, whether anyone listened or not, and constant practice had given her a voice of great beauty and power.

StripeSide could not reply from so far away. She’d never felt WingWatch’s compulsion to sing, and she did not have WingWatch’s range.   She turned in the direction of WingWatch’s calls, and began to jog that way through the night.  

When she came within range, she called back, desperate to hear herself, and to hear someone respond to her.

She heard WingWatch’s call again, and just at the limit of her reception she heard the voice of SnailEater replying.

SnailEater? What was _he_ doing here? He should have been with StripeSide’s pack. WingWatch and SnailEater were here together, which implied that they were here looking for StripeSide. Unease prickled through her bloodheat.

She crested the last hill, and came within line-of-sight of WingWatch. She could smell Real People now. WingWatch, and SnailEater, and the yearling Cloud Person, FireMountain. What was going on? She cough-barked, summoning them to come toward her, and ran to meet them.

“WingWatch!” StripeSide sprang up onto a long mound that her heat-sense told her contained a long-abandoned stone wall.

WingWatch screamed as she sprang out from the trees. SnailEater and FireMountain were close behind her, their bloodheat burning against the night.

“I greet you!” StripeSide called as she saw WingWatch.

“StripeSide! I greet you, sister!”

WingWatch was brindled-green, and had the same stocky build as StripeSide herself. Her back and flanks bore two perfect bows of scars, where the Mad Giant Person had bitten down on her body and flung her aside. She leaped up onto the buried wall to join StripeSide. Her bloodheat was flashing her affection.

StripeSide hiss-snapped affectionately at her neck, and flashed, “I am happy,” through her bloodheat.

She had not felt so happy to greet her sister since the battle with the Mad Giant Person, when she had been so sure WingWatch must have been killed. She wanted to blurt out how terrible it was to be alone – surely not even a human could endure solitude for four whole days! – but SnailEater and FireMountain were right behind WingWatch. There were things that an alpha could confide in her sister that she could not say in front of her packmates.

“You command here!” SnailEater said, leaping forward to greet StripeSide.

StripeSide sprang into the air, and lashed out at him with her killing-claws. “I command here!” she agreed. SnailEater whipped around, with the speed of a snake, and oriented himself on the same north-south line as Stripeside, showing his respect to his alpha.

“I am glad to find you! We have been searching all over for you!” WingWatch said, whirling to stand north-south as well.

Her bloodheat said, “I am relieved.” It was a more complex emotion than simple happiness, and StripeSide noticed it with alarm. Something was going on here!

“What’s wrong?”

“FirstHuman is missing!” WingWatch said.

“Yes,” StripeSide hissed, snaking her neck unhappily. Her bloodheat flashed her regret. “I hurt him. I drove him away. It is my fault.”

“No!” WingWatch hiss-snapped. “None of that matters! You don’t understand, StripeSide. FirstHuman went into the human town to buy supplies for the lair and didn’t come back.”

“What is this you’re saying?” StripeSide barked.

SnailEater snaked his head around, to stare at young FireMountain.

The yearling was circling his elders at a respectful distance. The eight Cloud People knew very well that StripeSide didn’t like or trust them. His neck was snaking from side to side in earnest uncertainty.

“You!” StripeSide snapped at him. “Explain!”

FireMountain’s hide bleached grey as he found himself stared at by both his alpha and the battle-scarred WingWatch. “The war-party who passed by the lair a few days ago captured him,” he squeaked. “We saw them with him.”

 _“They dare so!”_ StripeSide screamed. Her hide tightened in terror instantly. She dropped her throat, breastbone low to the ground, and roared her rage into the night. _“HE’S MINE!”_

“He’s a prisoner,” WingWatch said. “Chained, and held under weapons, and in danger…”

“We go!” StripeSide interrupted and sprang off the wall. _“We go now!”_

...................................................

It was nearly dawn when the Real People reached WingWatch’s nest.

WingWatch had chosen to lay her eggs inside a cluster of old human buildings. The buildings were made from thick blocks of stone, but they were so old they had been forgotten, and lay buried under centuries of dense forest. The humans who built it were long dead, and the forest had reclaimed it completely.

It was an auspicious place to lay eggs. It had taken the heat-sense of the Real People to even notice the dressed stone walls under the jungle floor. If humans hadn’t found this place for hundreds of years it was not likely they would find it now.

The roof of the nest itself was a curved bowl, roofed with stone, and painted with geometric lines and mysterious symbols. It was dark, and warm, and damp. WingWatch’s eggs lay at the centre of the nest, on a circular mound of mud and shredded grass. Their shells were creamy white and flawless.

The nest was large enough for the eggs’ four parents, WingWatch and SingsAlone, SmokeShell and OnlyFiveFingers – as well as ShinySmoothHead.

Now, StripeSide, SnailEater and FireMountain had followed them through the narrow stone passage, and the nest was quickly crowded. They clustered around the eggs, taking care not to bump any of the bowls of hot water that the humans had set out to keep the air damp for the eggs. SingsAlone's electric lights cast sinister shadows around the low roof, every time someone moved, making the nest look even more dark and mysterious than it really was.

“We can’t leave him there,” StripeSide said, staring around at the other Real People. Five pairs of yellow Real People eyes looked back at her, and two sets of white-rimmed human eyes.

“No,” WingWatch agreed. “No-one is suggesting that. That would be intolerable! He is your bond-mate.” She signed as she spoke, so that SingsAlone and ShinySmoothHead could follow the conversation. 

“The war party may not even know who he is,” SnailEater said.

“They killed one of their captives, you said?” StripeSide asked FireMountain.

“Yes.” The yearling was pressing himself against one of the stone buttresses that supported the domed roof. The patterns painted on the wall behind him flowed over his hide. “I saw it happen. They killed him with a bang-and-pain, right in his face.” His bloodheat flashed horror at the memory.

StripeSide felt fear flood through her bloodheat. It wasn’t done for an alpha to show fear, but she couldn’t help it. “We can’t leave him there,” she repeated.

“We won’t,” WingWatch said.

There was a silence around the nest, other than the two humans, singing back and forth in their unintelligible language, discussing what had just been said. 

WingWatch stretched her neck out, lowering her snout to her eggs. She closed her eyes to look more closely at their temperature.

“They’ll need more water soon,” she said. “And that one there is ready to turn.”

She sat back, and curved her neck back to look down at SingsAlone, who was leaning against her side. She pointed her middle talon at one of the eggs, and then signed to him, <Turn that one.>

SingsAlone shuffled forward, pushing his eye-pieces up his nose with one fingertip. He knelt over the eggs, pointed to the egg in question and signed, <This one?>

When WingWatch nodded her snout up and down, SingsAlone dipped his fingers into the bowl of warm water next to the mound of mud. He picked the egg up carefully in his wet fingers, patted the egg gently to moisten it, and put it down again, upside down, back into its pocket in the mud.

 _Therewego. Goodlittleegg,_ he sang. _Whata goodlittle eggyweg… Eggedy weggedy wog..._ He didn't seem to be singing _to_ anyone; SingsAlone, like WingWatch, simply sang for his own amusement whether anyone listened to him or not. 

ShinySmoothHead pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead, and squeezed his eyes shut. _Merrrrrrrrrde…_

“My human is a very fine human,” WingWatch watched SingsAlone with an expression of satisfaction in her bloodheat. “I’d have broken that egg by now, for certain, if _I_ had to turn it every few minutes. See, all of you, how wonderful my human is?”

StripeSide restrained her annoyance. There would be a day when _she_ laid her first clutch, and FirstHuman turned them and moistened them for her. And _then_ WingWatch would see which of their humans was better!

But she had to get him back first! He was hers. He belonged to her. Even if he chose not to return to her, no-one was allowed to harm him, ever! All who tried would regret it!

“I don’t know how we _can_ get him back,” SmokeShell said, thoughtfully stroking the underside of his throat with one talon.

 _“What?”_ WingWatch said, flashing her anger at him.

“I mean, how can we?” SmokeShell asked. “This is a war-party. War-parties attack other humans. We can’t simply send a messenger into their camp and ask for our human back.”

“I’m not proposing _asking_ them for anything,” WingWatch snapped.

“You’re proposing attacking them,” SmokeShell said. “Reclaiming him by force…”

“… Which TravelsOverWater has forbidden.” OnlyFiveFingers looked at his bond-mate, and SmokeShell looked back.

“They attacked first, by taking our human prisoner!” WingWatch snapped.

“TravelsOverWater has forbidden attacking humans. Any humans, under any circumstances.” SmokeShell signed, <Humans, Meat Not.>  

“It can’t be coincidence that they took _him,_ ” WingWatch snarled. “He’s the bond-mate of an alpha of the Real People, not some farmer! This is already an attack! Attacks are met with force!”

“If we attack humans,” SmokeShell said, “word will get out to other humans, and they will come for us, with weapons, and fire, and bombs, and they will burn us out and destroy us, as they did on the Island of Clouds."

“We can’t attack humans,” OnlyFiveFingers agreed. “TravelsOverWater is the Alpha of Alphas, and this is her law.”

“But they have taken StripeSide’s bond-mate!” WingWatch snarled at him, across the nest. “You can’t suggest leaving someone’s bond-mate with a war-party for the sake of a _rule!”_

She’d abandoned signing, but SingsAlone seemed to recognise that she was getting angry.  He put a reassuring hand on her forehand. _Takeiteasy…_ he sang softly.

“This isn’t just a rule!” SmokeShell said. “This is her law! This is her first and strongest law!”

“You’re only saying that because _your_ bond-mate is not a human!” WingWatch shouted at SmokeShell. “You’d sing a different tune then, SmokeShell!”

“I’m saying that because TravelsOverWater is the Alpha of Alphas!” SmokeShell shouted back at her.

“I will deal with TravelsOverWater’s law,” StripeSide interrupted.

All eyes turned to her.

They were all silent, staring at her, including the humans. She would not fill that silence with an explanation. An alpha did not need to justify or defend her actions.

“I will deal with TravelsOverWater’s law,” she repeated, into the silence, and signed it too for good measure.   “I will find my human, come what may. SnailEater – FireMountain – I can’t ask you to disobey TravelsOverWater.”

“I’m coming!” SnailEater said. “I joined your pack because I believe you’re right. War will come to the People, and we must meet it killing-claws-first.”

“And I will come, too,” WingWatch declared. She glared at her mate and his bond-mate. “FirstHuman was _my_ alpha too, once.”

“What about your eggs?” StripeSide objected.

“What about them? They’re _eggs._ They won’t know I’m not here."

She curled her long neck down to look at SingsAlone.  <I go to help StripeSide, and find FirstHuman,> she signed to him. <I will return as soon as I can.> 

<Go,> he signed back. <He is my friend too.  You go and get him back!>

 

.....................................................

 

TravelsOverWater herself met them before they reached the war-party.

StripeSide broke out from the forest onto the path with WingWatch and SnailEater close behind her. She found TravelsOverWater waiting for her, with half a dozen Real People from both StripeSide’s pack and TravelsOverWater’s around her, and three humans. As Alpha of Alphas, TravelsOverWater commanded both her own pack, and any other whenever she chose.

“TravelsOverWater,” StripeSide hissed as soon as she saw the Alpha of Alphas. “You command here!”

“StripeSide,” TravelsOverWater said. “I greet you!”

StripeSide whirled, staring at all of them around her, ensuring that they all saw her and knew that she saw them.

She saw BentTail, and SlidingRocks. MoonRain and JaguarPaw. JadeTapir and CloudyLeftEye. There were humans here, too: TravelsOverWater’s own HighClimber, and SnoresLoudly, and BluestEyes.

“He is well,” TravelsOverWater said, without being asked.

“Where is he?” StripeSide asked.

“About two thousand-steps north of us, now. I have charged the Cloud People with the duty of tracking him from a distance, unseen. They report that he appears to be well, and healthy."

“Have we communicated with them?” StripeSide asked.

“No. We cannot show ourselves. We can only watch. I am very sorry.”

“Not as sorry as the humans in that war-party are going to be,” StripeSide snarled.  

“You cannot interfere,” TravelsOverWater said. “He must free himself. I’m sorry, StripeSide, but not even to save your human will I endanger the Pack, and on that I will not yield.”

“No,” StripeSide said. “I don’t accept that.”

“I am the Alpha of Alphas,” TravelsOverWater said. “And this is what I say we will do. The secrecy of the Pack is our first priority. We do not show ourselves.”

“I don’t accept that,” StripeSide said. “I reject that.”

She was aware, without looking around, that SnailEater and WingWatch had come out from the trees, and were flanking her. They were outnumbered, but that did not matter. The rest of the Real People would not interfere. This was between StripeSide and TravelsOverWater. She was shorter than TravelsOverWater, but she was younger, and stronger, and she knew what was at stake. She was as ready to fight as she ever would be! Now was the time!

TravelsOverWater pulled her neck up, and cocked her head at StripeSide. She didn’t look angry.

“So,” she said, thoughtfully. “That’s how it is?”

“That’s how it is,” StripeSide agreed.

She flexed her talons, but before she could move TravelsOverWater was on her. The alpha leaped, throwing herself into the fight. Her killing-claws lashed out at StripeSide’s eyes.

StripeSide had just enough warning to leap up to meet her strike. She kicked with her own killing-claws up, and met TravelsOverWater’s attack, chest to chest. The strike meant for her throat was deflected by her legs, and then they were facing each other, clutching each other close with their forehands and striking with both killing-claws. They leaped and lashed out at each other, clutching and kicking, each trying to slash the other’s belly with their killing-claws.

TravelsOverWater was _fast_. She kicked like lightning – but StripeSide was heavier. Her kicks were driving TravelsOverWater back, back, and blood was flying, and suddenly TravelsOverWater was gone.

She’d lost her balance and toppled backward. She must have known she was in a desperately vulnerable position, because she yielded the position instantly, and was gone.

StripeSide leaped after her, talons grabbing, teeth ready to finish the fight, but TravelsOverWater was just too fast. She rolled back to her feet with a whip of her tail, and spun around to face StripeSide again.

StripeSide caught her breath. Blood was already running down her breast and belly. Battle was _not_ like hunting! Just a few seconds of equal contest and she was exhausted. Real People were tougher than prey – and she hadn’t dreamed how fast TravelsOverWater was! She struck with the speed of a crocodile!

But the blood was streaming down TravelsOverWater as well. Blood was running down her legs, just like StripeSide’s. She was also gasping for breath – and _she_ was four times StripeSide’s age.

“Yield, StripeSide!” TravelsOverWater said.

“I will _not yield!”_

“Now is not the time for a succession battle,” TravelsOverWater panted. “I am right. Reclaiming your human will endanger the whole Pack. Yield, StripeSide!”

“You are wrong! Hiding in the forest like _prey_ endangers the Pack! Secrecy is not safety! You are _old,_ and you are _wrong,_ and _you_ put the Pack in danger!”

“For twenty years, I have kept the Pack safe,” TravelsOverWater said.

“You were great,” StripeSide said, “but you’ve _had_ your day! A new strategy is needed now! _My_ strategy! _My_ rule! Now is _my_ time!”

StripeSide leaped.

TravelsOverWater tried to spin out of the way, instead of leaping back. She was fast – she almost got away – but StripeSide was heavier. Instead of striking with her killing-claws, she threw herself forward with her forehands and jaws reaching out. TravelsOverWater was whirling to spin away, and StripeSide landed on her back, and immediately sank her teeth and talons into her.

Her weight drove TravelsOverWater to her knees. The old alpha fell, and StripeSide clung to her back with her talons and her teeth, trying to stay on top. She felt TravelsOverWater heave under her, and knew TravelsOverWater was trying to roll and strike upward with her killing-claws. StripeSide clamped her teeth around the crest of TravelsOverWater’s neck, but TravelsOverWater wrenched her head free, and snaked it around to snap at StripeSide’s throat.

_Soft throat, and wind-pipe, and arteries!_

She yanked her throat up and out of danger.

TravelsOverWater’s jaws snapped on the soft skin – _missed!_ – but pulling away gave TravelsOverWater enough room to get her legs up. She was on her back, and her killing-claws were free. Her claws landed on StripeSide’s breastbone and dug in, and she heaved StripeSide off her with all her strength.

StripeSide was nearly lifted off her feet. She staggered backwards, wrenching herself away to get the hooked killing-claws out of her hide. Blood was pouring from her belly, streaming down her legs. She could taste TravelsOverWater’s blood in her mouth, feel scraps of torn hide in her teeth.

TravelsOverWater was on all fours, a few paces away, heaving herself to her feet. Her neck and back was red with blood. She was wobbling, but she was fierce, and she turned to face StripeSide again. She would not give up her rule so easily! She opened her jaws to face StripeSide, and screamed her threat.

StripeSide staggered back. She was too slow for TravelsOverWater. She knew she could not match that speed – but she was stronger. She was _far_ stronger. She leaped again.

TravelsOverWater leaped to meet her, whipping out her killing-claws, but StripeSide wasn’t kicking. She took the kick on her belly, but she kept coming. She swallowed the pain of those kicks, and shoved back to meet them. She burrowed straight into TravelsOverWater’s kicks.

And TravelsOverWater was kicking, and leaping, and kicking, and leaping – but StripeSide was driving into her, and _she_ was heavier, and stronger.  TravelsOverWater kicked and leaped and each kick she was driven back, and back, and off the path, and off-balance. And suddenly TravelsOverWater was toppling over backwards and _this t_ ime StripeSide did not let her get away.

TravelsOverWater hit the ground with StripeSide on top of her.  She was trying to flip herself upright again, but she was pinned against a tree, just where StripeSide wanted her. StripeSide lunged down, her killing-claws braced into the ground, and gaped her jaws wide for TravelsOverWater’s exposed throat. _Soft throat, and wind-pipe, and arteries!_

“I yield!” TravelsOverWater screamed.

StripeSide froze, her teeth around TravelsOverWater’s throat. TravelsOverWater’s head was trapped in StripeSide’s jaws. She was helpless.

“I yield!” TravelsOverWater repeated. She was lying completely limp. “I yield to you!”

StripeSide opened her mouth. She pushed herself up and off TravelsOverWater with both forehands, and staggered backwards.

“I yield to you,” TravelsOverWater said. She was gasping for breath, lying utterly limp, head and tail outstretched on the ground.

StripeSide was wobbling on her feet with exhaustion. She took another step back, and looked around.

The Real People had watched the succession battle in silence. She was aware, suddenly, that as their fight had raged across the clearing, the Real People had been scattering around them to keep out of their way. They’d snatched up HighClimber and the other humans and shielded them, so that the delicate humans would not be crushed by the two battling dinosaurs.

Now HighClimber tore herself out from SnailEater’s grip, and ran to TravelsOverWater. She threw herself down at TravelsOverWater’s head with a wail.

Nobody spoke, but their bloodheat showed a variety of emotions – awe; shock; disbelief; fear for the future.

“I command here,” StripeSide said to them all.

WingWatch spoke first. “You command here!” she declared. “StripeSide - new Alpha of Alphas!”

“You command here,” BentTail echoed. He commanded TravelsOverWater’s pack in her absence, and his words were taken up by the others.

TravelsOverWater was struggling to sit up, and her weak voice joined the chorus. “You command here.”

TravelsOverWater was sitting in a growing puddle of her own blood, watching StripeSide with an expression StripeSide could not name in her bloodheat. HighClimber was still holding TravelsOverWater’s head, trying to mop some of the blood off her face. She was leaking out of her eyes, StripeSide saw, shocked.

StripeSide lowered her snout to sniff at the strange salty smell. The little human turned with a scream and hammered at StripeSide’s face with both fists. StripeSide pulled her head away from the angry fists popping against her nose, astonished by the human’s behaviour.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s trying to protect me,” TravelsOverWater said.

“She’s leaking out of her eyes!”

“They do that when they’re very sad,” TravelsOverWater said. “She doesn’t understand.”   TravelsOverWater sat up, slowly, trying not to startle HighClimber. She reached her forehands out carefully, and folded her human down to herself.  <It will heal,> TravelsOverWater signed. <Worry not. StripeSide commands, now.>  

“You command now, StripeSide,” WingWatch said. “So what is your first command?”

StripeSide looked at WingWatch, and the realization of what she had done nearly made her stagger. She’d challenged TravelsOverWater, and she’d won! She was Alpha of Alphas now! The whole Pack was hers to command.

She’d wanted this – she’d looked forward to this moment – but not _now_. Not so soon. One hundred and thirteen Real People, spread out all over the forest! She was too young. She was not ready!

She looked around at them all, watching her, waiting for her commands. She was the new Alpha of Alphas – she would have to _make_ herself ready. Now was not the time, or the place, but her hand had been forced by the war-party. She would have to make herself ready – the whole Pack depended on her now.

“Tell me about this war party,” she said, looking around them all. She kept her doubts out of her bloodheat and her voice.

"We believe that this war-party is one that captures stray humans, and keeps them until their own pack pays a ransom to get them back safely," BentTail said. 

"They will get a ransom from us,"  StripeSide promised.  "It will _not_ be in a coin they enjoy."

SlidingRocks spoke. “They travel every day. There are ten fighters in the war-party, and all carry weapons. The Clouds say that they all carry knives, and hand-bombs, and small bang-and-pains. They also have seven of those big weapons that fire many pellets in a few seconds.”

“I’ve been shot at with _those_ before,” WingWatch said. “Those things hurt _us_ – never mind what they would do a human!”

She reached up one talon, and touched the scar on her breast where a lead pellet had hit her during the battle with the Mad Giant Person. That pellet had never come out again, and WingWatch claimed that she was still carrying it somewhere inside herself.

“And they also carry a weapon we have not seen before,” BentTail said. “A black metal box, with a glass eye on the front.”

“We don’t know what it does, exactly,” his bond-mate SlidingRocks explained, “but the human who carries it aims it at everything and rarely puts it down. It must be some new and fearsome weapon.”  

“Then we must not give him cause to use it,” StripeSide said, grimly. “They don't see us until we are ready to be seen. We move by night. Only the Cloud People are to watch them by day.”  

“Humans never fire at what they can’t see,” BentTail said.

“And if FirstHuman manages to escape by himself?” SnailEater asked.

StripeSide looked at SnailEater. “War-parties prey on their own kind. They are parasites. Ticks get squashed.”

“Good,” said FireMountain softly, almost inaudible in this congress of his elders.

“Hear me now!” StripeSide said, looking at all of them. “This is the law of StripeSide, Alpha of Alphas! The humans who live in this forest are _ours._ They protect _us,_ and we _will_ protect them!”  

“I like this law!” said WingWatch, fiercely.

 


	5. The hunt

The hostages were being moved often. Maggie explained that it was to make it harder for the Colombian Army, or any of the paramilitary groups to find them. They walked through most of the hours of the day, and camped in a different place.

The kidnappers were very confident. They walked through the forest with their guns slung on their shoulders, with a radio playing Colombian music for company. Owen was glad for the radio, but not for the music.

Owen knew that a sudden burst of interference on the airwaves was a sign that the raptors were close by, and talking to each other. Jurassic World, and Jurassic Park before them, had always had trouble with their radio communications. It had taken Lowery Cruthers to figure out why: the dinosaurs talked to each other, through sensory organs that had died out with them 65 million years ago. 

So far, he’d heard nothing.

He wasn’t sorry. The chain around his wrist had not yet been released, and he still hadn’t figured out how to unlock it. The longer it took before a raptor came looking for him, the better. One of the kidnappers, Julian, had adopted Roy’s camera and was teaching himself how to use it. He was walking everywhere with it on his shoulder, filming everything, as if he wanted to start a new YouTube channel called Hostage-Keeping for Ransom and Lulz. He was filming now, as they walked.

Owen knew he had to get himself out of trouble before any curious raptors came to see what StripeSide’s human was doing with these strangers. The longer he stayed here, the more risk there was that Julian caught a raptor on film. Nothing else mattered. He _had_ to find a way to get the chain off his wrist, and get out of there.

There was a shout from the head of the line, close to the trees.

“Hey, captain!” Rodrigo shouted at Pedro. “Come and look at this!”

“What is it?” Pedro shouted back.

“I don’t know,” Rodrigo said. “You have to see this, captain.”

Pedro walked off the path to where Rodrigo was standing at the base of a tree, staring at something on the ground. Julian followed. The hostages didn’t have to walk far to see what had attracted Rodrigo’s attention.  “Holy shit!” Maggie said, stopping dead.  

The ground between the trees was red with a massive puddle of blood, soaking into the forest floor. More blood splashed the trunk of a thick tree, trickling down the bark. The ground had been ripped up as if by massive claws. It looked as if some animal had been shredded here, ripped apart like Christmas wrappings. The flies had found the blood, and the hot air already hummed with them.

“Is that what it looks like?” Cristian asked, hesitantly.

“Oh, yeah, that’s blood,” Maggie said, propping her hands on her hips and staring down. She was _not_ covering her nose and mouth with her hands, Owen noticed, as if she was also quite used to the smell of fresh blood. He wondered what the hell kind of journalist she was. 

And it _was_ fresh blood, not yet congealed.

He sniffed the air, carefully. Yes, there was a strange smell under the blood.  It was a meaty tang that you might mistake for congealed blood if you didn’t know better.

Usually, Owen didn’t even notice that smell any more. He’d smelled it every day since he’d started work at Jurassic World. He'd lived in a cloud of that smell for years.  Everything he owned probably reeked of it. He only noticed that smell if he was away for a few days – and when he came back to it, it smelled like home.

His life was _weird_ , if he stopped and thought about it. How many other people in the world thought that dinosaurs smelled like _home?_

Nobody else had noticed the smell. The kidnappers were as worried as the hostages. A few of them had brought their guns up, and were aiming their sights at the treeline, anxiously. And Julian was _still_ filming, damn him! 

“Whatever this was, it didn’t survive,” Maggie said.

“Nothing can lose this much blood, and walk away,” one of the kidnappers agreed.

“But there’s no body.”

Owen kept quiet.

He knew a creature that could lose this much blood and walk away. Raptors had a different vascular system to humans, and a distributed nervous system. WingWatch had survived being grabbed by the Indominus Rex’s teeth and thrown two hundred yards _._ The clean-up team had found fourteen bullets in dead Echo’s body, but she had kept right on running. Velociraptors took a _lot_ of killing. Two raptors had had a vicious fight right here, recently, and there was no body because both fighters got up and walked away.

Owen stood and looked around at the trees. Velociraptors had been here, less than an hour ago. They might still be here, watching from the trees. 

He had to get this chain off his wrist ASAP!

Around him, the discussion was still on-going. Heads were being scratched. Theories were being suggested. Julian had bent double, and was filming the deep gouges in the ground closely with the TV camera on his shoulder.

“Maybe it was a fire-fight?” somebody suggested.

“We would have heard it,” Pedro said. “And this blood is fresh.”

“It looks like something was hunted, here.”

“Then where’s the carcass?”

“Jaguars like to put their kills in trees.”

“Jaguar doesn’t do _that_ ,” Ivan pointed at the deep gouges in the ground. “And any animal with this much blood would be too big for a jaguar.”

“Then what the hell happened here?”

“Hang on,” Julian said. “I’ve found a boot print, right here.” He pointed down.

“A boot?” Pedro asked.

“Small, too. A child, or a woman. Look – whoever it was, she stepped _into_ the blood. She walked away.”

“Some _campesino_ got taken by a jaguar, and his friends came along and got his body back,” Rodrigo said. “That’s what happened here. No mystery.”

Pedro slung his AR15 back on its slings.

“Whatever did this, it’s still around,” he said. “Keep your eyes open. We’re moving out again. Inigo, take the lead.”

* * *

 

They camped that night, and had supper, and the kidnappers found they had trouble with their radio. Their usual music kept being interrupted by shrill bursts of static, no matter how they adjusted it. Every crackle of static caught Owen's attention and made his muscles tighten.  Raptors were out there, talking in a language that humans couldn't hear.

Owen sat between his fellow hostages, and tried to swat away the rising mosquitoes. Who sat where was determined by the chain, but they could talk comfortably if they sat in a circle.  Cristian was already asleep at Owen’s side, curled around himself like a puppy.

On the other end of the chain, Roy was teaching Julian how to use the TV camera. Owen could see the Englishman’s pride in his craft; the passion of a man who knows every trick of his trade, and wants to see it practiced well. After a few minutes, Julian got up and went away with the camera.

“You know you’re not getting that back again,” Owen pointed out, watching Julian sit down with the camera on his lap, clearly trying to memorise the controls.

“He _might,_ ” Maggie said, “and if he _does,_ I want what’s on it. Colombian kidnapping, first-hand, as-it-happened! This is the kind of stuff that wins Pulitzers!”

“This is the kind of stuff that gets journalists killed,” Roy said, gloomily.

“This is the kind of stuff that got me into journalism in the first place!” Maggie said. “I am going to write a book!”

And some people thought the raptor-trainer was _nuts,_ Owen thought, wryly. “What happened to your velociraptors?” he asked.

“I’ll come back for them,” she said, breezily. “I know they’re out here.”

“No, they’re not.” Owen said.  

The tinny tune on the radio exploded into a blast of crackling. Rodrigo gave up, annoyed, and turned it off.

Somebody was singing out there, Owen realized. A raptor singing was the only thing that could jam a radio signal so thoroughly.

“What makes you so sure they’re _not_ here?” Maggie asked.

Owen had let himself be distracted by the radio, but Maggie was still staring at him, waiting for an answer.

“What makes you so sure they _are_ here?” Owen turned the question back onto her. “One gizzard-stone is not proof.”

“I spoke to Alan Grant. You know Alan Grant?  He literally wrote the book on velociraptors.”

“I've heard of him,” Owen said. 

Owen had actually met Grant, before he started working at Jurassic World. He’d gone to Snakewater to ask for Grant’s advice about taming raptors, but Grant had chased him away, with a sharp lecture about idiots who thought velociraptors could be tamed. Owen hadn’t listened, but in hindsight maybe he should have paid more attention.  You would never be able to tame a velociraptor, any more than you could tame Julius Caesar, or Tamerlane.  They didn't want to take orders. They wanted to _give_ orders. 

“Alan Grant told us a new theory… He told us he has a new idea about what happened at Snakewater...”

“He _also_ told us no force on earth or in heaven could get him to come with us,” Roy interrupted, pointing his finger at Maggie.

Maggie waved Roy’s interruption away. “Grant says he hasn’t published this theory because he doesn’t have any proof yet, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

“Yeah, well, I guess _he’s_ not the History Channel…” Owen shrugged.

“Grant says that he’s been digging at Snakewater since 1978, and in that time he’s found _thousands_ of hadrosaur fossils. Thousands of hadrosaurs. There are places at Snakewater where the ground is literally covered in hadrosaur eggshells. But in all that time, he’s only ever found _one_ carnivore species: velociraptors.”  

“That makes sense,” Owen said.

“No, it doesn’t! Where are all the other species? Dromaeosaurus, Oviraptor, Coelurus, Tyrannosaurus – all of them – where are they? Half of the food chain is missing from Snakewater! There's nothing there but velociraptors, and thousands and thousands of hadrosaurs. Grant says that’s not a normal predator-prey dynamic in the wild. It doesn’t make any sense, ecologically ... _unless_ …”

“Unless?”

“Unless it’s _not_ a predator-prey dynamic,” she said, and sat back with the satisfied air of someone laying down a royal flush. “Unless it’s pastoralism.”

“Pastoralism?” he said. “Ranching?

“Yes, ranching! Grant thinks the raptors weren’t preying on the hadrosaurs at Snakewater, he thinks they were _keeping_ them as livestock. And if raptors are smart enough to keep livestock, then they’re definitely smart enough to comm– !”

She was interrupted by the men at the other fire. Joaquin shouted out into the darkness. “Ivan!”

“Something’s wrong,” Roy said. “They’re getting upset.”

Maggie and Owen turned around to look. The kidnappers were standing up. Pedro was snapping orders. 

Pedro cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Ivan!”

There was no answer. The kidnappers around the fire looked at each other, confused.

“Joaquin, Martin!” Pedro ordered. “Go north a hundred paces. Rodrigo, south, with me. The rest of you, stay here.” Pedro slung his rifle over his shoulder and marched out into the darkness. The night swallowed him.

“What’s going on?” Roy called to Julian.

“Ivan went to relieve himself, and hasn’t come back.” Julian was standing with his back to his fire, staring out into the darkness over the foresight of his M16. His back was rigid with alarm.

“Could he have taken a wrong turn in the dark?”

“Ivan is half-Andaqui,” Julian said. “ _He_ won’t have taken a wrong turn. No! Don’t get up. Stay right there.”

They heard shouting from a distance. “ _Ivan!”_

_“Ivan!”_

“They’ll find him,” Julian muttered. “He can’t have gone far.”

_“Ivan, where are you, you fool!”_

_“Ivan!”_

Ivan wasn’t coming, Owen thought. Ivan was already dead. There had been ten kidnappers. Now there were nine. Owen had heard the bursts of static on the radio. He’d assumed it was singing, but it wasn’t. It had been the sound of an attack being coordinated.

“Weird,” Maggie said.

“I don’t like this,” Roy said. They looked at each other.

The shouts from the dark went on for half an hour. Pedro doubled his sentries, and they did not put down their weapons, but stared out into the dark, waiting and watching.   They spent a tense night, but Ivan did not come back.

Velociraptors were pack hunters. They used their sophisticated language and intelligence to manipulate their prey. They steered their victims into a kill-zone and then struck from ambush with lightning speed. Ivan probably never even saw what hit him.

But TravelsOverWater had forbidden La Patasola from ever attacking a human being. That was the first law of the pack: secrecy was safety. The raptors couldn’t afford the risk of someone escaping, to tell the outside world that there were dinosaurs in the forest. So who was out there right now? 

Owen had to get the chain off his wrist, right now, and get away from here before whoever was out there came back.

* * *

 

 

The next morning, the kidnappers got up before dawn, and Pedro sent them out walking in circles, looking for Ivan.

After an hour of searching and shouting, they found no sign of him. There was no body. There was no blood. There were no tracks. Ivan was gone. He had vanished.

Teodoro kept crossing himself, and muttering.

They couldn’t search all morning, and eventually Pedro got them moving. “If Ivan got into trouble, he would have fired his gun into the air,” he said. “He wandered off, that is all. He will have to catch up to us.”

“Will he be able to find us?” Maggie asked.

“Oh, yes, yes,” Pedro reassured her. “Ivan is half Andaqui. He’s lived here all his life. And he knows where we’re going… You have nothing to worry about, my dear.”

The hostages were shepherded along again, and they walked along the forest paths.

Owen was already settling into the rhythm of this strange mobile life. Walk, rest at midday, walk, camp for the night. The radio was still giving trouble, and Rodrigo folded down its antenna and put it into his pack.

At mid-day, Pedro called a halt at the edge of the river. Owen and Maggie were set to work peeling potatoes for thirteen people, and Martin and Teodoro walked off along the river bank, looking for a good spot to fish.   Julian was filming the parrots across the river, but he was too far away for Owen to grab the camera. Rodrigo sat down with his radio, trying to work out what was wrong with it.

When Inigo was satisfied with the potatoes, the hostages went to the river. The shingle bank was interrupted with a long slab of stone, hanging over the water, and the hostages sat along it by mutual agreement, resting their feet, and enjoying the view.

It would have been a beautiful spot, if not for the threat. The river was a rich green colour. Parrots were flocking on the far side of the river, bright splashes of noise and colour. If Owen ignored the chain around his wrist, he could imagine that they all here on a lovely tropical vacation.

“Beautiful,” Roy said, watching the parrots.

“Noisy,” Maggie said.

“Think of it as music,” Roy said. “Birds and insects, and monkeys, and…”

“No monkeys,” Cristian said, in English.  

“Monkeys?” Owen asked. He hadn’t even known the boy understood any English.

Cristian shifted back into Spanish. “No monkeys,” he said. “No monkeys, all day.”

“That’s quite odd,” Roy said. “You might not always see them, but they’re usually around.”

Owen lay back on the rock, allowing its heat to soak into his muscles. He rolled his head to one side, stretching his SCM muscles.

“Ah, that's good,” he groaned.

The river was broken by boulders and fallen trees that had been carried down by floodwaters. One of the fallen trees was wrecked against a rock, twenty yards downstream. Its tangle of roots clawed up in a crazy scribble of jagged spikes…

… The fallen tree opened an eye, and looked at him.

Owen sat up so fast he nearly fell off the stone.

“Careful!” Maggie said. 

“Just a twinge in my back,” Owen lied.

He looked back at the uprooted tree, but the velociraptor had closed its eye again.

He knew the white raptors were good, but that was _damned_ good. It had mastered the texture of the tree so well that it wasn’t even bothering to hide. It was just lying doggo in plain sight, trusting its camouflage to mask it.

He looked around at the others. Nobody else had been looking downstream. Nobody else had seen that eye. He looked back again at the tree.

He couldn’t tell which one of the eight it was, until it turned itself into its signature colours – black-and-orange for Nyiragongo, rich red-brown for Mahogany, brilliant green for Jade. It was watching him, he knew, even with its eye closed. They could sense thermal radiation, like snakes – a sixth sense that helped them hunt in total darkness. And where there was one raptor, there would always be more. You did not find a lone raptor.

He waited for the eye to open again, and formed his hands into the sign for <Stand down!> adding a flick of his elbow to turn it into a demand, not a question.

It was the only sign he could think of that wouldn’t attract attention.

The eye blinked, slowly, and resumed staring at him. Whoever it was couldn’t reply without moving and giving itself away.

There was a burst of shouting from Owen’s other side, and Cristian jumped anxiously. Owen turned to see what was going on.

Pedro was running on the river bank, and pointing, and shouting orders, and Inigo was getting up from the fire. They were running to the river, just upstream of Owen’s rock.

“Oh my God,” Maggie said, and Owen turned to see where everyone was looking.

There was a man swimming towards them, down the river. He was drifting idly on his back, head hanging, arms outstretched, and Owen realized that the man wasn’t swimming. He was drifting.

“Oh my God,” Maggie repeated, pressing her hand to her mouth. “He’s dead.”

“That’s Teodoro!” Owen said. He got to his feet, perforce dragging Cristian with him.

Pedro and Inigo were splashing out into the water, snagging Teodoro’s arms and towing him with them like a boat. Owen jogged across to them, towing the other three with him like a string of beads. He reached the bank as Pedro and Inigo were hauling Teodoro out onto the shingle beach.

Teodoro lay on his back, arms still outstretched the way he’d been hauled from the water. His eyes were open, and his wet clothes drained bloody water through the shingles.

“Oh my God,” Maggie said again.

Cristian bent double, suddenly, and collapsed onto his knees as if all the stuffing had been pulled out from him.

It was obvious what had killed Teodoro. There were two massive holes in his body – one in his chest, the other in his belly. He must have died in seconds, without time to scream or run away.

“What the hell did this?” Inigo shouted. “Teodoro!” He slapped Teodoro’s face, as if he thought Teodoro would blink and wake up.

The other kidnappers were running, now, clustering around their leader and their fallen friend, all shouting. Julian hoisted the camera onto his shoulder and aimed the lens at Teodoro’s corpse.

“Shut up!” Pedro howled into the noise, and they shut up instantly.

Pedro was kneeling at Teodoro’s side. In the sudden silence he put both hands on the bloody shirt and peeled it down. The hole in Teodoro’s chest was round, and punched straight through his ribs into his heart. Blood and water still seeped from the wound. Teodoro  looked as if he’d been stabbed by a lance.

“What the fuck did that?”

“It must be some kind of animal.”

“Shut up! It’s not an animal!” Pedro said. He sat back, looking up at his men. “Where are his weapons? Animals don’t take a man’s ammunition off him! It’s a man out there!”

Owen knew that no man had killed Teodoro.  Those massive stab wounds came from the killing-claws of a velociraptor, striking mid-air from a full leap. He had seen WingWatch bring down a fully-grown Gallimimus cow with that kick.   Teodoro died instantly, without a chance to flee or defend himself.

 _And then there were eight_ , Owen thought.

He wondered at his own lack of sympathy, but then he remembered Matteo. The driver had been killed without a second’s hesitation. Pedro had shot him with less sorrow than Owen's grandfather gave a horse with a broken leg. Matteo had also been given no chance to flee, or defend himself.

 _Only one predator here chose to be one._ He wouldn't waste his grief over men like these.  _  
_

But Julian still had his camera on his shoulder, and he’d got a good look at Teodoro’s wound. Julian, although he didn’t know it, had just filmed proof of the raptors’ existence.

Only one creature in the world struck with a kick like that, and any dinosaur expert who looked at it would recognise it. The moment that camera hit the public, someone would know what it meant. Someone would recognise it as proof that there really were velociraptors in the Amazon rainforest.

That camera _had_ to be destroyed, at all costs. He gritted his teeth. At _all_ costs. He no longer had the luxury of escape.

“Martin, you were with him?” Pedro asked. “Did you see anything?”

“Nothing,” Martin shook his head. “Nor heard anything. I didn’t know until you shouted.”

“He was crossing himself this morning,” Joaquin whispered, awed. “He knew he was next. He knew he was going to God today.”

“First Ivan, now Teodoro? Two men killed in one day?”  

“We’re being _hunted,_ ” Joaquin said. “There’s something out there.”

The kidnappers looked at each other.

 _“Someone_ , not something,” Pedro said, briskly, refusing to be infected by the dread of his men. “And they’re going to be very sorry. _We’re_ the hunters here. We own this forest. Not these pathetic _campesinos!”_

“Maybe they’re from San Judas Tadeo,” Rodrigo said. “Sent by _this_ brat’s father?” He pointed to Cristian.

“If they’re from San Judas Tadeo, we’ll go back later and teach them a lesson,” Pedro promised. “Burn down a few houses, rape a few bitches. Joaquin, Martin, Rodrigo – and you, Grady! Start digging a grave. We’ll bury him here after we eat. And nobody leaves the camp alone. Keep your eyes open. We’ll catch this bastard, and we’ll make him pay.”

Julian was still filming. He had mastered the trick of keeping the camera to his eye and using the other eye to watch where he was going. He walked around the beach, coming closer to Owen, trying to view Teodoro’s body from all angles.

Here was Owen’s chance. Everyone else was looking at Teodoro, or at the trees.   He would grab the camera and he would throw it in the water…

He wound the chain up in his fist, waited for Julian to step in range, and then he jumped. He used his weight to crash into Julian, and grabbed for the camera even as they both fell.

Owen crunched into the shingles, and Maggie screamed. Julian yelled under him, and they were rolling, crunching over the pebbles, fighting for the camera. Owen had his hands on the camera, one hand around the sound-mike, and the other trying to twist the camera’s body out of Julian’s grip, but Julian was hanging onto the camera for dear life. Owen could hear shouting over him, and then fists were battering him from above him, clobbering his back, banging into the back of his head.

He let go, stunned, shielding his head with his hands.

Julian was rolling clear, and the camera was out of his reach.

“What is _wrong_ with you?” Pedro was shouting, above Owen.

Hands grabbed him, rolled him over bodily and hauled him to his feet. He spat blood out of his mouth, and glared at Pedro.   “I saw my chance, and I took it!” he snarled. “Fuck you!”

Pedro stepped forward, and lashed out with the butt of his weapon at Owen’s head. Owen saw the blow coming and tried to roll with it, but it still slammed painfully into his face. He nearly fell, but he was being gripped by both arms, and he was dragged upright.

“Is it broken?” Pedro demanded.

“No,” Julian said. “I don’t think so…”

“Let me see?” Roy said, holding out one hand.

Julian shifted up, and watched as Roy checked out the camera. “It’s fine, I think,” Roy said. “The memory cards are intact. They can take a good pounding.”

“Smash it,” Owen ordered. His cheek was on fire, his neck muscles were twanging, and his eyes were smarting from the blow to his face, but he gritted his teeth. He refused to show how much it hurt. “Throw it down, and smash it!”

“Are you joking?” Roy demanded. “Do you know how much this thing costs? This isn’t a cheap toy for putting your cat on Youtube! That’s TV quality, that!”

“You try that again,” Pedro said to Owen, “and Teodoro won't be the only one we bury here! You hear me, Grady?”

“I hear you,” Owen said. He spat onto the stones.

He was going to try again, at the first chance he got. That camera was the greatest threat La Patasola had ever faced. His priorities had changed. He didn’t know what the raptors were doing out there, but he didn’t have the luxury of escape any more. That camera could not be allowed to upload its film to the wider world!

* * *

 

Owen, Chelo and Martin dug most of the grave, with Rodrigo watching over them with his AK47 ready. Teodoro was buried on a rise above the river, his grave dug as deep as they could put it. Pedro said a few words, and they moved on.

They walked through the afternoon. Owen kept his eyes on Cristian’s skinny back. The hostages walked in a line, with one group of kidnappers behind them and one group in front led by Pedro. Owen could sense the change in the kidnappers. They walked warily now, with their weapons close at hand. The radio stayed off. There was little conversation, and no laughter.

The day was dry for the rainforest. The path curved along the contours of a hill, in and out of clearings, in and out of sunlight. The birds sang, and the insects buzzed, and the grasses and leaves crunched under Owen’s boots.

Pedro held up a hand, and the line concertina-ed to a halt. They were halfway across a clearing.

“Everyone, fall out! We’ll take a halt, drink some water.”

“Oh, thank heavens,” Maggie groaned, and simply sat down where she was.

Owen unhitched his canteen, unscrewed the cap, and had a drink of water. It was already warm and tasted like plastic, even though he’d filled it just two hours ago. He sucked in a breath, and sighed, deeply.

This thick grass looked too ant-ey to sit down in. Owen squatted down on one heel to drink, waving flies away from his nose. Nobody seemed inclined to wander around looking for a more comfortable place to rest.

“Why did you try to smash my camera?” Roy asked.

“I don’t like having cameras stuck in my face,” Owen lied. He could hear how obtuse he sounded, even as he said it, but there was no avoiding it.

“Well, kindly refrain from doing it again!” Roy said. “Whatever is out there, Julian’s footage will help identify it.”

“He hasn’t actually seen anything yet,” Maggie said.

“He’s seen enough. Predators kill in particular ways,” Roy said. “Hyenas, lions, hawks – they all have their own specific signatures, like serial killers. An expert will be able to tell what killed Teodoro, just by looking at the wounds.”

“What do _you_ think it is?” Maggie asked.

“I don’t know,” Roy said. “In all my years filming wildlife, I’ve never seen anything kill like that. Whatever it is, it has no fear of man, that’s certain.”

Joaquin paused, his canteen held up. He stood up, and stared around, and then back down at the path they had just walked up.

“Er, my friends? Where is Chelo?”

“Isn’t he at the back of the line? He was right… oh.”

Heads turned, looking down the line.

Owen found himself looking as well, although his sinking feelings already told him Chelo would be missing. Owen already knew what was going to happen, playing out like a horrible movie. They were going to march around the forest in circles, and whoever was out there was going to pick off Pedro’s men one by one, patiently, methodically, until there were none left…

Inigo, at the back of the line, stood up, and called up to Joaquin. “He was right behind me, but I thought he went up to walk with you.”

Pedro stood up. He turned on the spot, counting his men. “Has anyone seen him?”

“We thought he was with Inigo and Martin,” Joaquin said.  

“Well, we thought he was with you!” Inigo said.

“Well, he’s not here now!”

“I told you all not to leave the line!” Pedro shouted. “Don’t you know how to listen? Must I staple your orders to your forehead?”

“He was right behind me,” Inigo insisted.

“You, and you!” Pedro shouted, waving his hands. “Come with me! I’m going to make him sorry he disobeyed my orders! You lot – stay here.”

Pedro marched off, retracing their steps with Inigo and Julian. The crunching of their footsteps died away, and their backs disappeared through the trees. They could hear Pedro’s voice at a distance, bellowing angrily.

_“Chelo! I’m warning you!   If you’re taking a dump back there, I’m going to kill you myself!”_

Joaquin, Martin, Rodrigo and Alejo stayed behind. All three of them were cradling their rifles.   All three of them were facing outwards, in a defensive little circle. All three of them had their eyes on the surrounding trees. Maggie gripped Cristian’s hand, comfortingly.

“We’ll be all right,” Owen said. “Don’t worry.”

“Chelo’s not coming,” Joaquin said to Alejo. He crossed himself. “He’s dead. I can feel it. What happened to Ivan and Teodoro has happened to him.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Alejo said. “It’s broad daylight!”

“It’s out there,” Joaquin said. “I can feel it watching us.”

“It!” Alejo scoffed.

 _“What was that?”_ Roy said, jerking.

“What?” Maggie said.

Roy pointed off the path, to the trees that lined the clearing. “ _There-there-there!_ Did you see it?”

“Where?” Instantly all of them were standing, facing in the direction Roy was pointing. The four kidnappers braced their rifles, ready to fire if something so much as coughed.

“Just that side of that big tree… that one with the creepers… right there… say fifty metres away? See it?”

Owen could see the tree. It was standing in shadows, surrounded by smaller plants, and shrouded with creepers and vines. “There’s nothing there.”  

“It was just there for a second!” Roy said. “I saw it!”

“What was it?” Maggie asked.

“I don’t know!” Roy said. “I just saw something move. Something big!”

“You saw Chelo.” Rodrigo stood up, staring. He cupped one hand over his mouth and shouted, “Chelo! Chelo, you idiot! Come here! Pedro is going to kill you!”

“That wasn’t Chelo,” Roy said. “It moved too fast. It wasn’t a man.”  

 _“Chelo!”_ Rodrigo shouted.

Silence.

“It’s La Patasola,” Cristian spoke up.

“Shut up, kid!” Alejo snapped.  

“It’s La Patasola,” Cristian said again. His voice was a teenaged squeak, but his spoke clearly. “She’s here, and she’s hunting _you.”_

“Maybe it _is_ La Patasola,” Joaquin muttered. He took his hand off his rifle and crossed himself again.

“Stop being so superstitious!” Alejo scoffed at Joaquin. “Nobody believes in stupid vampires.”

“Ivan told me a story his cousins told him about the…”

Joaquin was interrupted by the sound of voices. Pedro and his men were coming back. They were walking through the bushes, retracing their steps. Chelo was not with them.

“You didn’t find him?” Rodrigo asked.

“We found him,” Pedro said, grimly. 

“We found the parts of him _it_ didn’t want,” Inigo said.  

“He was dragged off the path,” Julian said. “It must have happened too fast for him to scream.”

“Oh my God,” Maggie said. She was trembling.

 _“And then there were seven,”_ Owen said quietly, and was surprised that he had spoken aloud.

He saw Pedro’s sunglasses turn to look at him. He wondered what the man thought but he couldn’t read his expression behind the reflective plastic. Pedro opened his mouth to speak, but he was interrupted.

“The Englishman saw it,” Joaquin said, pointing at Roy.

“You saw it?” Pedro demanded. “What did you see?”

“I don’t know,” Roy said. “It moved too fast.”

“A man? An animal?”

“I don’t know. It was big, like a man, but it was grey, like ash … and it moved too fast. I just caught the movement out of the corner of my eye.”

“It must have been a man in a ghillie suit,” Alejo said. “Human, see?”

“Nothing human killed Chelo,” Inigo said. He looked stunned; shaken.

“It must have been human!” Julian said. “It took his gun, and his pack! He had our satellite phone in his pack! Animals don’t do that!”

“ _People_ don’t do what _it_ did to Chelo,” Inigo said.

“Maybe it’s an alien,” Martin said. “Like that movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Alejo snapped. “It’s a man!”

“No,” Joaquin said. “It's La Patasola! Ivan told me. His mother was an Andaqui, and they know these things. La Patasola is a demon from the ancient world, and she walks at night, guarding the forest.”

“La Patasola is a myth!”

“La Patasola is a demon…”

“I’m telling you, it’s an alien!”

 _“Shut up!”_ Pedro roared, and the shouting stopped as if Pedro’s words had dropped a trapdoor on their argument.

“Captain?” Rodrigo asked. “What do we do?”

“Yes,” Maggie said. “What do we do?”

“We are being hunted,” Pedro said. “Something is following us, picking us off one by one. So we’re not going to the rendezvous. We’re going to House Eight instead, as fast as we can.”

“House Eight,” Rodrigo nodded. “Good.”

“There are weapons there, and a boat, and a more powerful radio to call La Leona for reinforcements,” Pedro explained, looking around at his men. “Then we’ll come back here, and we’ll find whoever is out there, and we’ll kill them. Whoever it is, we’ll make them pay for what they did to Ivan, and Teodoro, and Chelo.”

“I like this plan,” Julian said.

“Alejo, unlock their hands,” Pedro ordered, gesturing to Owen and the others.

“Captain?”

“That thing out there – it’s hunting us. _All_ of us. Unlock their hands.”

Alejo brought out the keys, and went down the line, unlocking the padlocks that locked the chain around all of their left wrists. The chain fell free, and Alejo gathered it up, and stuffed it into his bag.

Owen’s hands were free, at last! He could get away now – but it was too late to just skip around the nearest tree and run. He had to stay long enough to destroy that camera before Julian plugged those memory cards into a computer, and the proof of the raptors went up on Youtube.

“You’re not worried that we’ll run away?” Maggie asked.

“You try to run,” Pedro said, “and that thing will get you. We’re all in this together now. We must all stay together, or we’ll all die separately.”

“How about a rifle to defend ourselves?” Owen asked.

“No,” Pedro said.

“Not even a knife?”

“No,” Pedro repeated. He stopped in front of Owen. “I don’t trust you. Something about you is not right. I’m not putting a gun in your hands.”

* * *

 

StripeSide heard the call from the distance.

It was Copper’s voice, confirming that the humans had changed course. They had been heading south; they had turned off the trail they were following, and were now going north. They had passed Copper just a few feet away, unable to see her against a moss-covered tree.

“Good!” StripeSide sang back. “Well done! Now follow them! Follow them, wherever they may go!”

StripeSide looked around her at her pack, aligned east-west on either side of her. WingWatch was on her left, scars gleaming like bone on her sides. TravelsOverWater, BentTail and SlidingRocks were on her right, watching her. SnailEater was between them and the human war-party, watching.

HighClimber was here too, cradling her new weapon. It was called a LetterA.LetterK.FortySeven, and FirstHuman had carried a weapon exactly like it, when he’d jumped into the Great Crocodile’s pool to save StripeSide from its teeth.

It dawned on her, looking at HighClimber now, that HighClimber was carrying this weapon for exactly the same reason that FirstHuman had. He had saved StripeSide’s life with that weapon. HighClimber would use this weapon to defend TravelsOverWater. If StripeSide fought TravelsOverWater again, she would have to get through HighClimber first.  

“Let us now consider the state of mind of our enemy,” StripeSide said. “They know they have lost three of their number. They have now changed course, and they are travelling at some speed. Therefore, we may presume that they know they are being hunted.”

“They have lost three of their number, but they don’t know how,” WingWatch said. “Humans always fear things they don’t understand. They are afraid.”

“They certainly didn’t like what Copper and WoodAsh made of the most recent one,” SlidingRocks said.

“It won’t take much to panic them into full flight,” BentTail said.

“But they’re still travelling as a unit,” StripeSide said. “They are still armed. We must keep our distance.”

“In daylight, only the Clouds can stalk them easily,” WingWatch said.

“All right, so they’re travelling north,” StripeSide said. “BentTail, you know this area. What’s north of here?”

“They may be going to the river?” BentTail snaked his neck uncertainly.

“Can the river be crossed there?” StripeSide asked.  

“The river runs too strongly for humans to cross,” BentTail said. “And downstream is a waterfall. It is deep and dangerous.”

“They wouldn’t go to the river, only to put their backs against it,” StripeSide said.

“Wait!” TravelsOverWater said, speaking up for the first time. “About eight thousand-steps north-north-east of here is a house. They collect their white powder from the farmers there, and carry it across the river with a boat. There is usually a war-party there, guarding the white powder.”

“They are going for reinforcements!” WingWatch said.  

“They aren’t panicking at all,” StripeSide said. “No, they are planning a counter-attack. TravelsOverWater…?”

“Yes?”

“Go to that house. Take FireMountain and these two with you. I _want_ that house, and  I want _these_ humans _in_ that house, tonight. Any weapons in there, you will remove them. Any communications equipment, you will destroy it.”

“I understand,” TravelsOverWater said.

“What if there are humans there already?” asked BentTail.

“The only humans there will be servants of the war-party, and they will already be enemies of the Pack. If they fire weapons at you …?”

“Yes?”

“Kill them all.”

BentTail snapped his teeth.

“You command here, Alpha of Alphas,” TravelsOverWater hissed, and bounded away through the trees. BentTail and SlidingRocks jogged after their alpha.

WingWatch watched them both go.

“You should probably kill her,” she said. She spoke on the frequency she used only for StripeSide, when StripeSide was her sister again, and not her alpha.

“No,” StripeSide said.

“You should,” WingWatch warned. She turned, aligning herself to face in the same direction as StripeSide, the better to speak in very controlled voices.  "She will try to take back the Pack."

“I will not kill her,” StripeSide said. “Besides, that would mean killing her bond-mate too, and that I will not do. Humans belonging to the Pack are protected – at all times, not only when it’s convenient. That is my law.”

“She will challenge you,” WingWatch said. “She must. She believes that you are putting the Pack in danger.”

“Maybe she’s right?” StripeSide said, lowering her voice even further. “Maybe I should give the Pack back to her?”

WingWatch pulled her head back on her neck, surprised. “What about everything you’ve said about the future of the Real People? Being equal, and coming out of the forest, and all that?”

“Maybe she is right, and this task _is_ too much for me?  I’m too young, WingWatch. I can’t even hold onto my own bond-mate, and everyone can see it.”

“You have not lost your human!” WingWatch said. She aligned herself parallel to her alpha, and hummed reassuringly. “We’ll get him back, safe and healthy.”

“That is not what I fear the most, sister.”

“What, then?”

“I am afraid that I will have done all this, but I will lose him anyway,” StripeSide said. “He might not want to come back. I drove him away.”

“You didn’t drive him away!”

“I did. I hurt him, and I drove him away. I feared that I would lose him, and in trying to cling to him I fulfilled my own fear! He is where he is, because I let him leave.”

“Well, then you just have to win him back again.”

“I don’t know _how,_ ” StripeSide said. Her legs buckled under her and she sat down heavily, head and tail drooping on the forest floor. "I am going to lose him - I know it!"

WingWatch pushed her with her snout.   “Why would you lose him? He’s your bond-mate!”

“Is he my bond-mate?  My bond is not like yours, WingWatch. I never courted him! I _assumed_ he was my bond-mate.” She snapped at WingWatch’s probing snout, alarmed. “What if he _isn’t_ my bond-mate? What if he doesn’t _want_ to be my bond-mate? What if I just think he’s my bond-mate because he came here out of habit? What if he wants to go back to his own world and only stays with me because...”

“Oh, stop!” WingWatch snapped her teeth at her, irritably. “You think too much!”

“You can _never_ think too much!” StripeSide said, astonished.

“ _You_ certainly think too much!" WingWatch said.  She leaped around, kicking at the air.  "The great StripeSide! The visionary StripeSide! All fire, all fury! Writing! Mathematics! Human Song! The great StripeSide _never_ stops thinking!”

WingWatch had learned SingsAlone’s annoying human habit of saying the opposite of what she really meant.

“Are you being nasty?” StripeSide asked, suspiciously. “Because that’s not helpful.”

“You think you can do anything, as long as you just plan this, and schedule that, and accomplish that! You think you can do anything, if you just _think_ hard enough! Well, sometimes you need to stop thinking, and just feel things!”

“You can’t use your feelings to communicate with humans, because they don’t share our feelings,” StripeSide said. “They’re another species! You must think clearly to communicate clearly.”

“They’re not completely alien,” WingWatch said. “They have feelings, just like us. Maybe he doesn’t actually _like_ being dragged around, and told what to do, and have you plan out all his future for him? Have you considered that?”

StripeSide snaked her head from side to side, anxiously. “Do you think I should let him drag _me_ around?”

“I think that you should just ask him what he wants!”

“Ask him?” StripeSide stared at her sister.

“Ask him what he feels! You don’t think bonding with a human just _happens_ , do you? Listen to me, sister! We can bond with humans the way we do, because they already _have_ the instinct to bond with each other. We can hijack those instincts for our own purposes, _but we can’t change them!_ He feels what he feels, and he wants what he wants. You need to ask him what he feels. You can't build a bond just by sitting and _thinking_ at each other! Reason and rationality will only take you so far!”

“But he knows I want him. The more I try to show him he is _mine,_ the more I see him staring at me, thinking.”

“Well, perhaps that’s your problem? You can’t just _give_ yourself to a human that way. He raised you. He takes you for granted. He needs to know he doesn’t just _have_ you, for no reason. He needs to _work_ for your affection. He needs to feel he’s _earned_ you. That he has won you.”

“That’s backwards!”

“No, it isn’t. He’s human. I tell SingsAlone to court me, now and then, when I feel he is taking me for granted. He brings me dead flowers.”

“What do dead flowers do?”

“I don’t know,” WingWatch said, “but I do know that it’s a human courtship gift. Tell him he must bring you dead flowers! _Lots_ of dead flowers!”

“What if he doesn’t give me any dead flowers?”

“Well, then you’ll have an answer to all your what-if questions, won’t you?” WingWatch answered. “But I know he _will_ bring you dead flowers. He’ll _cover_ you with dead flowers! He adores you! He jumped into the pool of the Great Crocodile for you. He would not have done that if he didn’t adore you, would he?”

StripeSide felt a shiver run through her at the thought of the Great Crocodile. She grabbed for the tip of her tail, where the monster’s teeth had seized her and nearly drowned her. She would never forget the terror of falling into the water. FirstHuman had run into the water to save _her!_ That bravery, she would never forget.

She would do what was needed to get him back. He was her human! Hers! Every trick that the Real People had learned to communicate with humans, she would play to win him back. If that meant dead flowers, then she would take dead flowers by the bucket-load!

She put her hindlegs under her and thrust herself to her feet again.  "I _will_ get him back!” she declared. “But first, I must get him away from the war-party!”

“Now _that’s_ more like the StripeSide I know!” WingWatch said, enthusiastically, lashing her tail. “ _Yes,_ StripeSide!”

“I must go to him! I must smell him!

“Let us go there, now, and we can both smell him!”

“Come, WingWatch! We _must_ go, now!”

* * *

 

After two hours on the march, Pedro called a halt in the middle of a dense thicket of trees.

“Take a break,” he said. “Half an hour. After this, no more stops until we reach House Eight. And don’t go far away. Martin – Inigo – take first roster as sentries.”

They had stopped inside a dense stand of trees. Something had killed off the old growth, and the space was filled with a dense tangle of young trees, fighting for height. The dead trees lay around, some thrown over at odd angles, like a kiddies’ climbing playground, and all tied together in a nearly solid mass of creepers and lianas.

It was like being inside an over-planted fish-tank. They couldn’t see through the shrouds of moss and lianas, but equally nothing could see them, and the dense trees provided a natural fortification around them.

The ground was wet – not quite submerged, but it would be the next time it rained. The hostages found a fallen tree that was not too rotted to sit on. They scrambled up, out of the thick saplings, opened their canteens and drank some water.

“Why aren’t you scared?” Maggie asked Owen.

“I am scared!” Owen said, surprised.

“Bullshit,” Maggie said. “I’ve been a war correspondent my whole career. I know what scared looks like. You’re not scared. Why? What are you used to, that you’re not scared right now?”

“I am scared,” Owen said. “I’ve just learned not to show it in my body language. I’m an animal trainer, and you can fuck up a sniffer dog’s training if you get mad at it. ”

"I think you know what's out there," Maggie said. "And you're lying to us all."

"Rubbish," Owen scoffed. "Why would I?" 

Owen noticed Julian moving off, clambering through the trees with Martin. Julian was carrying his camera, as well as his gun. Pedro and Rodrigo were talking, bent over Rodrigo’s radio. Nobody was looking in Owen’s direction. 

Owen screwed the cap back onto his canteen. “When Pedro asks, you didn’t see me go.”

He jumped off the other side of the fallen tree. As soon as he was down on the other side, he ducked, so that he was out of sight of Pedro.

“Where are you going?” Maggie hissed.

“I’m going to see where Julian is going.”

“Are you crazy?” Roy hissed.

“Owen! You’re going to get killed!”

“Just trust me!” he said.

He started climbing through the trees, slipping between and over, and using force when he needed to. Maggie and Roy were soon hidden behind him. He knew roughly which way Julian had gone, and Owen followed as best he could.

He moved diagonally downhill, slipping and sliding, climbing up and through as much as down. The trees had tumbled down like a massive game of Pick-Up Sticks.   The sun dappled down onto the crazy quilt of grey-brown branches and deep greens around him, as if he was climbing through a clogged fish-tank.

He wondered if a velociraptor was looking at him, even now.

Could be. He wouldn’t see them until they wanted to be seen. No predator, anywhere, was as patient as a velociraptor. They would pick off Pedro’s men one by one, taking their time, until they were all gone. They’d done it before, after all, in the books from the old Jurassic Park.

_The most vicious creatures ever to walk this earth…_

Alan Grant might be an academic, but the old goat could really write. He’d painted a picture in his books that had poisoned the minds of a whole generation about raptors. If La Patasola was ever going to come out of the forest, they would need a writer of Grant’s calibre to rehabilitate that picture – but that would be hopeless, if Julian’s footage got out to the world’s media first.  

Owen paused, after a few minutes of walking. There was no shouting around him. There was no sound of raptors – but there was also no sound of Martin or Julian. Nothing moved.

If he blundered into StripeSide, she would want him to follow her out of here. He would have to explain why on earth he wanted to go back again. It was going to be a tricky explanation, since he didn’t think she’d ever actually seen a TV camera before.

Silence. He must have gone too far. He would have to scout around. He began moving to his left again, intending to circle around where he was sure the rest of the kidnappers were.

“What are you doing here?”

Owen jumped at the sound of a human voice. He turned in time to see Martin step out from behind a tree, holding his AK47 as if he was patrolling Kandahar.

Owen clenched his teeth. “Walking.”

“You were trying to get away!” Martin accused.

“Yeah, fine!” Owen shrugged. “I was trying to get away. What did you expect me to do?”

“There’s a _thing_ out there,” Martin said, his eyes hard. “And you’d rather be alone?”

“I’ll take my chances on my own,” Owen said.

Martin stepped closer, his boots trundling over small ferns in his path. “You. The captain is right about you. You’re not frightened. Why aren’t you frightened?”

“I am frightened!” Owen said. “I’ve just learned not to leak my emotions in my body language. I used to train animals, and you can’t let an animal see you’re afraid.”

“Rubbish!” Martin said. “I think you’re waiting for something.”

“Know what _I_ think? I think you’re so used to pushing frightened _campesinos_ around, you’ve forgotten what pathetic little _worms_ you and your captain really are.”

“You know what killed Chelo and Teodoro, and Ivan. You know what's out there. You know, and you’re keeping it to yourself.” Martin made a pushing movement with the AK47’s barrel. “You don't have to tell me. You _will_ tell La Leona.  Let’s go. Walk!”

Owen gritted his teeth, but he knew it was hopeless. He couldn’t jump the AK47. A velociraptor could, but Owen wasn’t fast enough, and Martin was too experienced to let him grab the barrel. Getting himself shot by Martin wouldn’t get that TV camera away from Julian.

He started walking uphill, following Martin’s directions.

_“Psst! Over here!”_

The hiss was so soft, Owen almost thought he had imagined it. He stopped, and looked around. Martin dropped smoothly to a crouch.   “Julian?” Martin whispered.

_“Over here," Julian hissed._

This time Owen was able to triangulate the sound. It came from his left. A tree had collapsed against another, to form a rough pyramid. A patch of olive-green between the two trees clashed just enough for him to identify it as uniform trousers, and then Owen picked out the man wearing them. It was Julian.  

“Over here!” Julian whispered again. “Quietly!”

Martin gestured with the AK47, and Owen dropped low, and scurried over. Martin reached Julian right behind him, and they all squeezed under the fallen tree.

Julian was crouching under the fallen tree. He had the camera on his shoulder, and he was holding it so that the glass lens poked out from under a broken branch on the other side. He was filming something on the other side of the tree.

“What’s happening?” Martin whispered.

“I can see it!” Julian breathed. 

“What?” Owen said, horrified.

“Where?” Martin said.

Julian didn’t lower the camera. He took one hand off, and pointed – slowly – slowly – no sudden movements to draw an animal’s eye. 

“Opposite slope… halfway up… I'm filming it. It's right there.”

Owen leaned down. He and Martin both followed Julian’s finger.

“Look very carefully,” Julian breathed. He was holding the camera absolutely steady. “It keeps coming in and out of sight. It's watching us.”

“It’s watching the camp,” Martin hissed.  

For a moment Owen saw nothing. The opposite slope was a broken tangle of trees. One hundred metres away was quite far to pick out something in particular in that clatter of green. Owen looked – and then suddenly his eye seemed to snap into focus on a blue hide.

StripeSide! It was StripeSide herself! She visible through a break in the trees, like a window. She was looking calmly into the distance, her long elegant head turning this way and that. As he watched her, she brushed a bug away from her face with her forehand.

Owen felt his mouth drop open with surprise.

 _“There she is!”_ he whispered.

He’d forgotten how beautiful she was! Her eye was golden, like living amber. He’d forgotten how lovely that bright marbled stripe down her sides looked. How could he _ever_ have thought he could go home, and forget about her?

His heart was singing inside him, even though he knew that seeing her here was a very bad thing. Julian had caught her on film, standing right there in bright daylight – beautiful, and vivacious, and unquestionably a velociraptor.

And then her head ducked down and she was gone, out of sight behind a tangle of lianas.

“I _see_ you,” Julian hissed.

“Can you get a clear shot?”

“No, it keeps moving,” Julian said. “Up and down.”

“I’ll work my way around from the left,” Martin whispered, “and get behind it. I’ll drive it toward you.”  

Picked off one by one, Owen thought. He knew how fast the raptors could move. He’d seen them attack, the night the Indominus attacked. The InGen team had been warned, armed and ready, and they were _still_ taken apart by four angry velociraptors.

“Don’t be a fool!” Owen said. “It's a trap! If you go after her she'll kill you!”

“Shut up, Grady!” Julian said. “You don’t get a vote.”

“We can kill that thing,” Martin said. “You both wait here. I’ll be back.”

“I'll whistle if it moves,” Julian promised.

Martin gathered up his rifle, and a moment later he was sliding away, his uniform rustling softly as he brushed against the underside of the fallen tree.

“He’s going to die,” Owen said. “You can see her because she wants you to see her.”

“Shut up.” Julian put down the camera at his side, carefully. He picked up his own AK47, and checked its magazine was clear. “We’re going to kill it.”

* * *

 

StripeSide stood still, balancing on the log she was standing on.

The wood was rotten, eaten through by fungus and insects, and it was soft enough for her to dig her claws into the trunk. 

“Stay right where you are,” she commanded FireMountain.

“I hear you.”

“Don’t move. He is coming toward you.”

FireMountain was disguised perfectly against a creeper-covered tree, facing her. The natural path that the human was taking towards StripeSide would take him right under FireMountain’s position. FireMountain had only to wait. He was controlling his bloodheat – even one of the Real People would have had trouble seeing him there. 

The humans, on the other hand… They were trying to hide under a fallen tree, but their mammal bloodheat showed up like brilliant lights. Humans were completely incapable of controlling their own vascular systems. Their body temperatures were maintained automatically, unconsciously. It was an adaptation that allowed them to sleep even in cold weather, for hours at a time, but it also meant that they could not hide their bloodheat.

She raised her head carefully, and looked again at the humans under the tree. 

_FirstHuman was right there!_

She gasped with shock. Her bloodheat flooded over her with emotions. _Happy! Happy! Happy!_ Her human was right there! She could smell him! How could she ever have thought she could let him leave her? 

She should have felt jealous because he’d gone away; should have been jealous that he’d caused so much trouble for them all, but all she felt was joy. Joy, joy, happy joy! She could almost hear the sound of his voice; almost feel the touch of his hands.

She stood up again to have another look.

Yes!

Her human was standing next to the other man, under the fallen tree. His bloodheat was glowing like a fire. She knew that bloodheat: that was happiness and excitement. His heart was beating faster with excitement.

Excitement at the sight of _her!_ He was as happy to see her, as she was to see him! Her joy was reciprocated!

Everything could be fixed, if he was happy to see her. Everything that was wrong in their bond could be remedied!

She wanted to leap up and down and sing with explosive joy, but the other human was still aiming a weapon at her. She couldn’t just stand and stare at her bondmate. She had to concentrate. Fight now, sing later.

The second human was still crouching perfectly still, staring at her. He’d put down the strange black box, and he had picked up an ordinary bang-and-pain instead. He was aiming the weapon at her. 

The third human was making his way through the trees. He was keeping downwind of her, and he was trying his best to keep out of her sight, but he showed up as a brilliant light in her bloodsense. In just a few minutes he would reach FireMountain.

She waited.

FirstHuman waited.

What was he waiting _for?_ There was something going on that she did not understand. His hands were free. He could get away. Why wasn’t he? He was waiting for something.

“How far, now?” FireMountain asked.

“Wait,” StripeSide ordered.

She alone could see every player in this day’s hunt. She could see FireMountain against the tree, and the third human coming towards him. The predator was about to become the prey. The hunter was being baited with his own quarry. They were moving beneath her, like little pieces on a human playing-board.

“Wait.”

She turned her head, and stared directly at FirstHuman.

He wasn’t looking at her. He was moving slowly, behind the other human. He was trying to do something, without letting the other human see. Humans might be as clumsy as a Gallimimus, but the Real People could teach them nothing about the art of deception.  

Now he was picking something up, gently. He was picking up the strange black box. He was folding it to his chest. Now he was sliding backwards away from the enemy, slowly slipping away. He had stolen something, and he was going.  

“How far?”

“Wait,” StripeSide said. Her gaze flickered from FirstHuman to the third human. He was walking around the tree where FireMountain was hiding.

FirstHuman was almost clear.

“How far?”

StripeSide wanted to wait for FirstHuman to be completely clear but she was out of time. The third human was right alongside FireMountain, level with his hips.

“Wait!”

The third human was walking past FireMountain, almost close enough to touch him. He was rounding FireMountain’s head without seeing him. FirstHuman was almost clear, but StripeSide was out of time! It was now or never! In one more second the human would see FireMountain!

“Now!”

 _“Ahh,”_ FireMountain sighed.

He stood up in a single leisurely flex of muscle, uncoiling to his full height like a serpent. His head rose vertically, the smooth arch of his spine unspooling, and the colours smoked over his hide as he abandoned his camouflage. "Hello, human..." FireMountain said.

The enemy turned, at last, sensing too late that there was something behind him. He turned as FireMountain reached his full height, and looked up as his death smiled down on him.

* * *

 

_“It can camouflage!”_

Martin's frantic scream was followed instantly by the roar of rifle fire.

Owen ducked and ran. 

Behind him, another rifle opened up, pouring fire out. Julian was pouring fire on the raptors. _“It can camouflage!”_

The sound hammered at Owen’s head. He wanted to run back to save StripeSide, but he had a duty to do. He ran to the nearest tree, and swung the camera by its lens in a short vicious arc. _Crash!_

The lens snapped off in Owen’s hand. He swung it again and again against the tree, glass flying from it. He had to smash it so that it could never be used again!

Julian’s fire suddenly stopped, and he bellowed, “Changing!” Another kidnapper was running down past Owen, shouting, and there were other men around him, pouring lead into the place where the StripeSide had been.

_Crash! Crash! Crash!_

Owen slammed the camera into the tree until he was surrounded by chips of glittering glass, and the camera in his hands was just a chunk of battered metal.

He became aware of Pedro’s voice, shrieking _“Cease firing! Cease firing! Hold your fire, hold your fire!”_

Owen let the camera drop.   He turned around. His throat was raw, and only then he realized that he himself had also been shouting at the top of his lungs.

The whole firefight had been over in a matter of seconds. Shreds of leaves and lianas and shattered bark were wafting on the air. They had torn up the forest, pouring shot into the place where StripeSide had been a few seconds ago. 

“Where is it?”

“Did we kill it?”

Their voices sounded far-away, as if they had been wrapped under blankets. Owen’s hearing had been deafened by the sound of gunfire. He stuck his finger in his ear as if he could wriggle out the deafness.  

“I saw it!” Julian was standing in the fork of a tree, crouched as if he was expecting return fire. “It grabbed Martin!”

Pedro signalled, waving his arms, and like a practiced fire team his men split into two groups and moved forward, leap-frogging from tree to tree.

“We’ve found Martin! He’s dead!”

p>“Where is it?”

“It must be here! _Nothing_ could have survived that! We were firing at point blank range!”

“I’ve got blood here!” Inigo yelled.

“If it can bleed it can die!” Rodrigo yelled back, excited. “We can track it and kill it!”

Owen's legs were suddenly heavy.

All of Pedro’s men had been pouring fire into the space where StripeSide had been. They’d plastered it with bullets, ripped up the forest in a swathe of hot lead. She could move almost faster than the eye could see. She couldn’t have been hit in that hail of fire. She had to be all right. She _had_ to be all right!

It was time to get out of here! No reason to hang around another minute, now that the camera was lying on the forest floor in a dozen pieces. He would go back, and find Maggie and Roy, and the kid, and he’d steer them to safety.

He pushed off from the tree, revitalised again, now that he had a plan.

“What did you see?” Pedro demanded.

“A monster!” Julian said. “And then the forest came alive, and there was another one… and it took Martin, right in front of me!”

“What do you mean, the forest came alive?”

“I don’t know!” Julian said. “There was nothing there – and then there was! The forest came alive, and ripped up Martin! It's a monster! But I’ve got it on camera! Where’s the camera! I'll show you!”

Any second now they’d remember that Owen was still here…

Owen broke into a jog. _Time to go, time to go…_

He heard the sound of running behind him, and a shout, and then he was grabbed from behind. He crashed down face-first into a bush, briefly insulted that he’d been taken down by a horse-collar tackle. Somebody jumped on his back.

“Get off!” he shouted. He was able to shove himself to his hands and knees.

“Where the hell do you think you’re –!”

Owen twisted around and smashed Alejo in the face with his elbow.

He used Alejo’s jerk backwards to throw him off his back. He dragged himself to his feet, but he hadn’t got more than two paces when he was grabbed again, and this time he had been grabbed by Alejo and Rodrigo at the same time. There was a man on either arm, slowing him down.

He lunged at Rodrigo, trying to force the smaller man over with his greater weight. Rodrigo let go, but Alejo was still hanging on his other side. He tried to drag Alejo with him, but Alejo got a better grip on his arm, and suddenly a whole _lot_ of nasty things were happening to his shoulder and elbow. He had to bend double to save his elbow from breaking.

He jerked his other elbow behind him, trying to hit at Alejo backwards, but Rodrigo scrambled up, and that arm was grabbed too – not as expertly, but Owen was trapped between them. He found himself driven inexorably to his knees.

“Fuck!” he raged. He fucking _had_ to learn martial arts!

Julian marched up, stamping his feet with rage. Owen was stuck on his knees, his elbow locked, which gave him plenty of time to really anticipate Julian’s punch before it landed. Didn’t hurt any less – in fact it hurt _more._

“What did you do that for?” Julian bellowed. Owen ate another punch to his face that jerked his teeth in his mouth and twanged painfully at his neck and trapped shoulder.

“What did he do?” Pedro demanded.

“He smashed the camera!” Julian said. “I had that thing on camera! I had a good shot of it! And he smashed it!”

“Too late,” Owen slurred. He smirked up at Julian. “You’re fucked now. Go on, hit me again. Won’t make you any less fucked.”

“I’ve had enough of him,” Pedro said. He reached for his hip holster, and Owen watched from his knees as the pistol came out. He thumbed off the safety. “Two million isn’t worth the hassle.”

“No!” Maggie screamed from somewhere behind him. "You can't!" 

“Yes, I can!” Pedro said. Owen flinched his eyes shut as the barrel swung to stare at him. 

“Wait!” Julian said. “No, captain!”

“Yes!” Pedro said. 

“He knows what’s out there!” Julian insisted.

“How do you know?” Pedro asked.

“Because he called it a ‘she'!” 

Owen opened his eyes. 

The pistol barrel was being lowered slowly away from his forehead. His eyes tracked it all the way down until it was parallel to Pedro’s leg. 

“Do you?” Pedro asked.

“No,” Owen lied, but _Oh God_ , he was going to die here, and he hoped StripeSide was close by, and he hoped she knew _why._

“He’s lying,” Julian said. "He said it was a 'she.' He said 'she' was laying a trap for Martin... He knows what that thing is." 

Pedro grabbed Owen’s collar and hauled on it. Owen was still on his knees, his arm locked behind him and his wrist twisted towards the sky, and the movement sent electric shocks up and down his arm.

“You know what’s out there,” Pedro hissed into his face.

“No,” Owen said, lying into Pedro's reflective sunglasses.  

“Lying,” Pedro said, shortly. He nodded to Alejo, and the pain exploded in Owen’s elbow.

His arm was on fire! His arm was going to twist right off! He tried to thrash sideways to get away but he was trapped.

“Fuck you! Ow-ow-fuck-you-ow!”

The pain eased. Owen opened his eyes, gasping for breath.

“What is out there?” Pedro asked.

“Fuck you!”

The pain came again. Owen’s mind flailed frantically, and seized a word, and pain forced the word out through his teeth, hoping it would be enough.

“La Patasola!” he shouted, desperately, frantically, hoping that half a truth would be enough to make the pain stop before his arm came apart like a chicken drumstick.  "La Patasola is out there!"

The pain went away. The difference was like cool water on a burn. Owen opened his eyes.

“La Patasola?” Pedro asked. “The vampire-woman of the forest?”

“That _thing_ was not a woman,” Julian said. 

“La Patasola is coming for you!” Owen gasped. “Fuck you! She’s going to kill you!”

He was suddenly terrified that tears were going to run down his cheeks. His face was hot with shame at how fast he’d folded under pressure. He didn’t want to say anything, but he was frightened that he wouldn’t be able _not_ to.

“I don't believe in silly stories about vampires," Pedro said. 

“Go to hell,” Owen snarled.  

“We’ll take you to La Leona,” Pedro said, unmoved by Owen’s defiance. “You’ll tell her the truth. Everyone does.”

Pedro nodded to Alejo, and suddenly Owen’s arm was free. He sagged, and clutched at his injured arm with the good one, frightened that it wouldn’t bend any more.

“Maybe he’s not lying,” Joaquin said. “Maybe it _is_ La Patasola.”

“That thing I saw was a _monster_ ,” Julian insisted. 

“What did you see?” Pedro asked Julian.

“It was a big animal, like a lizard, with a long tail, and big teeth. It walked on two legs, like a man. It was a monster, from a horror movie.”

“That’s a dinosaur!” Maggie said.

“How do you know?” Pedro asked.

“Because I came here _looking_ for dinosaurs! It stood upright, like a man, but it had a face like a lizard. Right? And it had three toes on each hand? Right?”

“Three fingers,” Julian said, “Like this,” and he turned his hand upside down, three stiff fingers pointing at the ground.

“That’s a velociraptor!” Maggie turned her head, and looked at Roy. “Raptors in the rainforest! I told you so!" 

“I don’t care what you call it, but I got proof,” Julian said. “I got it on film, for at least five minutes.”

“You’ve got nothing!” Owen said, panting, still on his knees, still cradling his aching arm. “I smashed the camera! Hah!” 

Inigo snorted. “Do you think you’ve accomplished anything?” he said. “You haven’t. Look.”

He held out his hand. Two slips of black plastic lay in his palm.  

“You lose, Grady,” Julian said. “You smashed the camera, but you forgot to take out the memory-cards.”

“No!” Owen shouted, in despair.

He lunged up from his knees to grab the cards, but Inigo whipped them out of his reach, and Alejo kicked him sharply in his ribs. Owen folded around the kick. He caught himself on his hands, and simply stayed there, panting, defeated.

“Velocipraptors!” Pedro said, amazed. He took the memory cards from Inigo’s hand, and looked at them lying in his palm, as if he could read them with his own eyes. “Velociraptors in the rainforest! Amazing!”

“Nobody is going to believe us, until we show them _that,”_ Julian said, pointing at the memory cards in Pedro’s palm.

Pedro nodded. “We’re going to take these cards to La Leona. And then we’ll come back here with flamethrowers, and RPGs, and helicopters, and we’ll wipe these things off the face of the earth a _second_ time.”

"No!" Roy cried out.  "They're wild animals!"

“You can’t!” Maggie said. “We have to find out how many there are - where they came from - how they got here - how they live!  You can’t just kill them!”

“Watch it happen!” Pedro said. He closed his hand around the memory-cards, and put them into his pocket. “I’m going to kill every last one of those things!" 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I rewatched Predator recently. Let's just say it's a movie that has stood the test of time.


	6. Long dark night

 Owen was an idiot, he told himself, angrily.

He’d _seen_ Roy showing Julian how the TV camera worked. He’d _heard_ Roy say that the memory cards could withstand a good pounding!

He was an idiot, he was a fool, he was a moron, he was an imbecile! If a man at Jurassic World had been such an idiot, he would have sacked him himself. He was a fool, a moron, a cretin.

The raptors’ safety depended on him, and he’d been a fool! He really was a stupid Squid with a training clicker!

He’d succeeded in getting the chain off his wrist, sure! But now he had the whole thing to himself! Both of his wrists were chained together now, with a length for Julian to hang onto for good measure. And now, he had Julian’s undivided attention. Julian looked as if he was itching to shoot Owen – both for smashing the TV camera, and for letting Martin walk into an ambush. The raptors were still out there, the proof that they were there was still in Pedro’s pocket, and Owen’s position had got even worse.

But Pedro had other plans. He had the memory-cards in his pocket, and he had Owen, and he was in a hurry to get them both to La Leona. Pedro kept them moving through the afternoon, snapping at his men if he thought they were straggling, and they didn’t stop. There were no more stops, except to fill their canteens, and later when Joaquin decided to fire off a whole magazine, turning a suspicious rock into Monte Cassino. There was no time to talk to Maggie and Roy, to explain his bizarre behaviour.

Owen walked, and raged bitterly at himself, and spoke to no-one.

It was nearly nightfall when they reached the river. The dim forest light canopy was melting into pewter shadows. The path grew wider until it was almost a dirt road. It broke out from the forest into clear space, and the party paused.

They were on the edge of what looked like an abandoned farm. In front of them was a wide abandoned field, overgrown to chest height. On a low rise in the distance was a square of corrugated-iron rooftop. Beyond that was the river.

The whole vista was stroked with the last afternoon light. Owen could see columns of tiny insects, dancing in the sunset in the air over the field. The field was silent. Nothing moved, nearby or far.

Owen wondered what had happened to the farmers here, and realized he didn’t want to know. The guerillas, or the guerillas’ enemies, or the cartel, or the cartel's enemies spraying of their crops in ‘the war on drugs,’ would have forced them to abandon this farm. The details didn’t matter, because the result was always the same: the little people suffered.

“To the river,” Pedro said. “Come on.” He started walking toward the high grasses that had choked out the field.

“No, wait!” Maggie said. “We can’t go into the long grass!

“What?” Pedro asked, stopping and looking back at her .

Maggie stuck to her guns. “We can’t go through the long grass. We have to go around!”

“There’s no time to go around. It’ll be dark by the time we get there,” Pedro said,

“No!” Maggie said, shaking her head, and backing up. “You don’t go into the long grass! You _never_ go into the long grass!”

“Since when?” Pedro asked.

“Oh, for God’s sake! Didn’t any of you guys read the books?” she demanded, throwing her hands up.

“What books?” Pedro asked.

“Velociraptors _love_ attacking from ambush! That’s what happened in Malcolm’s book. They went into the long grass, and the raptors tore them apart, and that's what will happen to us if we go down there! You never, _ever_ go into the long grass!”

“She has a point,” Roy said to Pedro. “Long grass, velociraptors – bad combination, old boy.”

“They’re waiting for us in there, Pedro!" Maggie said. "Walking in that field is going to be like smearing yourself with tuna _pâté_ and jumping into a shark tank!”  

“You?” Pedro turned abruptly to Owen. “What would you do?”

“I would go through,” Owen said, brusquely. “It’s getting dark. They hunt in the dark. There's no time to go around.”

Pedro nodded, as if that was exactly what he wanted to hear, and turned to Rodrigo. “Then we’re going around.”

Owen ground his teeth.

“Keep your eyes open, and your weapons up!” Pedro said. “Nobody goes into the long grass!”

“We’re right behind you, captain,” Rodrigo said.

Julian jabbed his barrel into Owen’s back. “You. Walk.”

It was almost dark by the time they reached the open yard around the house. The house had been built close to the river, on a slight rise that would keep it dry in the wet season. It had a corrugated tin roof, and bricked-up windows. The paint was smeared with years of dirt and peeling in broad leaves, but the walls looked solid.

To the right of the house, on the edge of the water, was a lean-to. A wooden jetty stuck out into the caramel current of the river.

“Miguel!” Pedro walked forward from the trees, stumbling in the dusk. He should have been clearly visible from the house, even in the gloom. "It's me, Pedro!"

The house was dark. No lights, no sounds, no movement.

“We should have been challenged by now,” Rodrigo muttered. “Something’s wrong.”

“Miguel! It’s me, Pedro! Where are you? Come out and greet your friend, damn you!”

“It’s a trap,” Joaquin muttered. The whites of his eyes showed as he raised his eyes to heaven and crossed himself.    

“I don’t like this,” Pedro said. “Inigo! Alejo! Go!” He waved his index finger, sending two of his men sliding off on a tangent to the right to investigate the boathouse.

“The rest of you, close up on me!” Pedro marched across the yard, tension outlined in his back and the way he gripped his rifle. “Miguel!” he yelled, but even he didn’t sound as if he still expected anyone to answer. Miguel and his men were not here. The house was deserted.

Maggie, Roy and Cristian followed Pedro, keeping together. Owen was prodded along by Julian. Julian was still covering the hostages, but even Owen wasn’t sure if he was guarding them or protecting them. Inigo swung around, covering their backs, retreating backwards warily across the yard.

“Nothing here, captain!” Alejo called from the boathouse.

“Come on!” Pedro sprinted the last few strides across the yard to the front door. He bounced up onto the porch, and the door banged open as Pedro and Rodrigo hooked around the door and inside the darkness.

Rodrigo appeared again on the porch and waved his arms at Julian. “It’s all clear! Come on!”

“Go!” Julian snapped.

Owen wanted to dig his heels in, but Julian grabbed him by his shoulder, his rifle propped between his other hand and his hip, and the rifle’s barrel dug into Owen’s side.

“Give me a reason,” he snarled, and Owen walked, stiff with rage, the rifle barrel digging into his ribs.  

The porch came up to meet them, just as light flared inside. Owen climbed the step onto the porch, and Inigo and Alejo coming up from his right side. A second later, Inigo closed and barred the door behind them.  They were all inside the walls of the house.

“Safe and sound,” Alejo said, satisfied.

Owen looked around.

This room took up half the house.  An open doorway led to the other room.  The windows had been bricked up, allowing only a small loophole where a defender could stick out his rifle’s muzzle. It might have been a farmhouse once, but it was a fortress now.

Pedro was lighting a second lantern.

As the lights came up, Owen saw the destruction.  The furniture had been smashed. A radio set had been disembowelled; guts of wire trailed to the dirt floor. Bags of rice and manioc flour had been shredded.

“They got here first!” Inigo said.  

"Where's Miguel?" Pedro demanded, but no-one answered.  Miguel was gone. 

“You, sit there!” Julian said to the hostages, gesturing to the central dividing wall.

Owen sat, slowly, glaring at Julian.  Roy let down with a tired groan. Cristian slumped, exhausted.  Maggie wrapped one arm around him. 

“Inigo,” Pedro said. “The boat?”

“It’s still there,” Inigo said. “Fuelled and ready to launch.”

“Good. Julian, the weapons?”

Julian walked to a cupboard against the central wall. He pulled both doors open, and stopped dead.  The cupboard was empty.  

“All gone! It’s all gone, captain! There’s nothing here!”

Rodrigo came out of the second room. “They didn’t take the consignment for La Leona,” he said, shaking his head. 

“Who’s _they?_ ” Pedro snarled.

"Dinosaurs?"  Rodrigo suggested. 

“Dinosaurs did _that,_ did they?” Pedro pointed at the shattered radio. “Dinosaurs took our RPGs? Dinosaurs?”

“Yes,” Cristian muttered. “Dinosaurs were in here!”

Cristian’s eyes were fixed on the dirt floor. His finger came up slowly, and pointed at the floor.

Joaquin picked up the lantern.  He went down on his haunches, lowering the light to see what the boy had spotted.

There were white smudges on the floor. Someone in had tracked white powdery footprints onto the floor.  Three, Owen saw – and three, and three more there. Whoever had been in here had walked on three toes.

If you went to a thousand paleontology digs, you could see tracks like those, preserved in stone from sixty-five millions years ago. Dinosaur tracks.  

“Dinosaurs,” Joaquin whispered, looking down at the tracks. He crossed himself. 

Pedro turned with a snarl. His shadows loomed as he lunged at Owen.

“You!” he barked. He grabbed Owen by his shirt, and dragged him to his feet. “This has to do with _you!_ This started when we took _you._ _You’re_ the reason for this!”

“We should just shoot him, captain,” Julian said.

“It’s time for some answers!” Pedro snarled. “No more lies! Dinosaurs don’t smash radios and steal RPGs!”

“I warned you!” Owen said. “I told you you should let me go!" 

“Like hell!” Pedro snapped. “You know who killed my men.”

“Dinosaurs,” Owen said. “A pack of velociraptors, just like Maggie said.”

“Don’t lie to me!” Pedro leaned closer, teeth bared. In the malarial light, his sweat gleamed across his cheekbones. “InGen wants to pay two million to get their hands on _you._ Why _you?_   Who are you?  Who is out there, right now?" 

“You really want to know what’s out there?” Owen leaned forward into Pedro’s face, staring into Pedro’s eyes. He kept his eyes steady, and kept his voice level, as if he was speaking to an aggressive animal. 

"Tell me!" 

“Really? You really want to know what InGen was playing with? You think you can handle it?”

“My men are dead. Tell me!”

“They’re not just dinosaurs. They’re genetically-engineered biological weapons.”  

“What?”

“Do you think all InGen does is build family fun-parks? InGen thought dinosaurs would make the perfect living weapons.  The dinosaurs out there are a secret military genetic programme to build dinosaur super-soldiers...”

“Good grief,” Roy said.

“Except that InGen’s toys didn’t play by InGen’s rules,” Owen said. “Oh, no. They want to be in control. They had their SkyNet moment, and they went rogue.”

“How do you know all this?” Pedro demanded.

“Because _I’m_ the one who let them out.”

There was a little silence, and Owen let them think that over.

Pedro didn’t break eye contact with Owen.  Owen didn't look away. 

“Why do you think InGen wants to pay two million dollars to get _me?_ Because I let the raptors out into the rainforest.  InGen wants payback.  I let the raptors out into the rainforest.  Me."  

“Nonsense!” Pedro said.

"The raptors know I'm here," Owen said.  "They don't care about you - they want me.  And they'll stop at nothing to get at me.   I warned you, Pedro, when you took me. Just let me walk away, and nobody needs to get hurt.  And now it's too late.  You're all going to die here."  

“Bring it on,” Rodrigo said, hefting his rifle and patting the butt.

“The raptors were genetically engineered to be weapons,” Owen said, looking at him. “They can smell you.  They can see your body heat. They can hear your radio. They can camouflage themselves. And they’re _out there_ right now, circling this place. You're all going to die here.  And you know what? _You deserve it."_

“I say we shoot him now!” Rodrigo said.

“I agree!” Julian said. 

"I'll do it!" Joaquin said. 

“No!” Pedro held up his hand to Julian. He didn’t break his stare with Owen.

Owen bared his teeth, daring Pedro to do his worst. 

“But…”

“No.  I’m not buying this story,” Pedro said. “He’s trying to frighten us with nonsense!"

 _Fuck,_ Owen thought.  His bluff had failed. 

"Whoever is out there, it's not an animal," Pedro said. 

"What about the dinosaurs, captain?" Julian said.  "I know what I saw."

"There might be dinosaurs out there - but _animals_ don't steal RPGs, or smash radios.  There are _men_ out there! And men can’t get in here! And in the morning, we’ll launch the boat and go upriver to La Leona. If InGen wants Owen Grady, they can pay La Leona for him."

 "What about them?" Rodrigo asked.  

“Put him in the other room, and lock him up there,” Pedro ordered. “Put them all in there.”

“You’re the boss,” Rodrigo said.

Owen was dragged to his feet, and hustled into the other room. They made him sit down on the floor, and chained his wrists to the jamb of the door.   The air reeked of ether, and the gasoline used in turning coca leaves into cocaine.

Maggie and Roy walked through the doorway into the second room, and Cristian followed them.

“Wow,” Maggie said, stopping short. “That’s a lot of coke.”

“Make yourselves at home,” Owen said drily, from his place on the floor. “ _Mi coca es su coca.”_

The room was almost dark. Only chinks of lamplight, penetrating the thin wall where the daub had crumbled off the wattles, gave  light.  Owen could see a massive heap of cocaine bricks on the floor. The room was coated in a layer of powder, and shredded plastic lay like fallen leaves on the floor.  Under the smell of cocaine was a strong smell of dinosaur. It smelled as if whoever had tracked cocaine onto the floor had only just left.  

They ate dry biscuits and dried fruit, and that was just enough to take the edge off, and sleep.  Maggie and Roy found scraps of cloth to pillow their heads on. Maggie rolled up a blanket, and called Cristian. “Cristian? Come over here and lie down.”

The boy was soon asleep. 

“There really are raptors out there,” Maggie said. “Velociraptors in the forest. They’re out there, right now.”

Owen was suddenly so sick of lying and deceit that he couldn’t stand it any more. He’d lied, and he’d lied, and he’d only dug himself deeper into trouble.  All this lying made him feel dirty, as if he'd killed Martin and the others himself.  

“Yeah, they’re really out there," he said. 

“The urban legends are actually true!" 

“I do wish you didn’t sound quite so happy about it,” Roy said, plaintively. “Since there’s a very good chance we’re going to get killed tonight.”

“I know,” Maggie said. “I’m sorry, it’s my fault, I dragged you into this … but at the same time _I was right!_   I _knew_ Claire Dearing was lying! I _knew_ there were dinosaurs in Colombia! History Channel has nothing on Maggie Montroe!”

“You’re incorrigible,” Roy sighed, and shook his head. 

“This _is_ a gizzard-stone, isn’t it?” Maggie asked Owen. She patted her pocket.

“Yeah,” Owen admitted. “That’s a gizzard stone.  I probably even know the raptor it came from.”

“Why does InGen have a price on _your_ head?”

“InGen doesn’t want _anyone_ finding out what I know. Feral raptors?  After InGen has been swearing for twenty years that nothing ever got off Isla Nublar?  InGen would burn this whole forest down first to keep that secret.”

“That’s exactly what Pedro wants to do.”

“That’s exactly what I have to stop,” Owen said.

“You’ll have to get out of here first,” Roy said. “You have to admit, our chances right now do _not_ look good.”  

There didn’t seem very much to say to that.

Cristian was already asleep, and Roy fell asleep after him.

With his hands still chained to the door-jamb, Owen could not lie down comfortably. It was going to be a long night. He managed to turn, so that he could lean his shoulder against the wall, stretched out his legs, and looked around.

Chinks of lamp light penetrated through the wall, and he could hear Pedro and Joaquin talking in the other room. Maggie was awake, and watching him. He could see the shine of sweat on her face, as a sliver of light fell across her cheeks.

“I never thought it would come to _this,_ ” she said softly.

“No-one does.”

“I’ve filmed in some hairy places, and yeah, I’ve always known it could happen, but not like _this._ ”

“Yeah,” Owen said. 

“It’s my fault,” Maggie said. She drew up her knee under her, and leaned her head on the crook of her elbow. Her hair fell around her head, curtaining her face in her despair. “Roy and Matteo came here because I talked them into it, and we’re all going to die here.”

Owen shifted, feeling uncomfortable.  It wasn't her fault.  If it was anyone's fault, it was Owen's.  

God knew, he couldn’t get the genie back into the bottle now, even if he tried. Maggie and Roy had already seen too much. He’d lied, and lied, and he was sick of lying. Lying had only got him into deeper trouble. _Always tell the truth_ , his grandfather had taught him _; it’s easier to remember._ He wasn’t cut out for deceit. It was time to tell the truth.  _  
_

He didn’t have a choice. The alternative was to let the raptors kill them. The kidnappers were scum, and he wasn’t going to lose sleep over _them,_ but Maggie and Roy and Cristian had blundered into this mess by accident. Maggie was a journalist, but that was a risk Owen would have to take.

“We’re not going to die here,” he said.

She raised her face to him. “You said…”

“Everything I said was the truth. It just isn't the _whole_ truth.”

“There’s _worse_ than that?”

“Not worse,” Owen said. “Just different. You can’t fight the raptors.  You can't outrun them. You can’t hide. If you fight them, you’ll die."  

“Then we are all going to die here.”

"No," Owen said.  "There's another side to the coin!  The only way to live with raptors is not to fight them!"

"Not fight?" 

“When the raptors get in here – and they _will_ get in here – there’s something you need to do.”

“What?”

Owen shifted. He straightened his back, the better to raise his hands. 

“You need to do this,” he said. “Wrists like this. Three fingers, because raptors only have three fingers. And do this.”

He signed <I am friendly.>

“What?” she said, incredulous.

"Do it!" 

He repeated the phrase. The chain hampered his movements, but he could still sign.

<I am friendly> was one of the phrases that most of Maria’s Andaqui people had learned, and some of the more isolated campesinos had picked it up as well. Any of the raptors would recognise it instantly. 

“Do it! Your lives are going to depend on it in the morning!”  

“Okay!” she said. She repeated his hand movements, clumsily. "Like this!"

"Exactly like that!" 

“What is it for?”

“When the raptors get in here, you need to show them this. Don't run!  Don't fight!  Just do this!  As soon as they see this, they'll know you learned it from me!  So do it again.”

She repeated it again.

“Don’t forget what I’m doing with my chin!” he said. “Your chin is the personal pronoun!  You’re saying ‘I am friendly,’ in Raptor Sign!"   

“Raptor Sign?” Maggie said.

“This is the _other_ side of the coin,” Owen said. “You can’t win a fight against raptors. But you don’t need to fight. They’re  _intelligent._ ”

“Wait, hang on! _Raptor Sign?”_

“Sign language. We use it to communicate with them!  So practice!  You might only have a few seconds tomorrow!   You _cannot_ afford to fuck this up.”

 _“Raptor sign?”_ she said. “Oh, come on. You’re pulling my leg.”

Owen sighed. “Yes, raptor sign.  We talk to them.  They’re intelligent.”

“You taught raptors to use sign language?”

She turned to Roy, and started shaking him vigorously. He’d only been asleep a few minutes, but he woke up irritable.

“What?” he grumbled.

“He says he taught the velociraptors to use sign language!” Maggie said.

“Yes, right, can I sleep now? Honestly, Americans.”

She shook him again. “Roy!”

“What?” 

“He says he taught the velociraptors to use sign language!” Maggie said. “Owen. Show him the _thing._ ”

"What?"  This time, Roy sat up, slowly, trying not to wake Cristian.

Owen signed, <I am friendly,> slowing down each gesture so that they could see them clearly.

“What is that?” Roy asked.

“Tomorrow, when the raptors get in here.  You need to do _this!_   Kneel down, look them straight in the eyes, and do _this._ Exactly like this.” He signed  <I am friendly.>

“You don’t look dangerous animals straight in the eyes like that," Roy said.  "They take it as aggression.”

“Velociraptors are dinosaurs. They don’t play by mammal rules. Look 'em in the eye!  It's polite!  It tells them you know they’re there. And then you have to do _this._ Do it!”

Owen showed them <I am friendly> again.

Roy practiced the sign. “And what does it mean?”

“It means, ‘I am friendly.’ Short and sweet, and gets the message across,” Owen said.

“How the hell did you teach dinosaurs to use sign language?” Maggie asked. “It takes years to teach an ape even a few basics. I filmed a piece about Nim Chimpsky once…”

Owen laughed.

Poor Nim Chimpsky’s communication never got longer than _‘Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you.’_ There was nothing there even _remotely_ similar to the velociraptors’ precise sentences and elaborate tense structure. Raptor sign had verb moods, for God’s sake! The only raptor who spoke like that was EatsPlants.  

“What’s so funny?” Maggie said.

“I didn’t teach the raptors sign language,” Owen said. “They figured it out on their own.”

“Lots of animals are able to learn sign language,” Roy said. “Nim Chimpsky wasn’t using _real_ language.”

This was exactly the reaction that Owen had expected. Owen and Lowery had known that if they marched out of the forest claiming that raptors could talk, they would run into the same people who denied the intelligence of chimps, and dolphins, and Alex the Parrot. He’d be accused of the Clever Hans phenomenon … with the added complication that _velociraptors ate people._ That was why he and StripeSide had spent almost a year working on the Great Project. 

“Raptors are nothing like chimps!” Owen said. “They’re every bit as intelligent as we are. They reason.  They plan. They contemplate their own existence. Alan Grant was so close to the truth, I want to punch him in the face.”

“Oh, come on. Where’s your proof?”

“Other than the fact that they came in here, and smashed up a radio set, and stole a bunch of RPGs?”

“ _People_ did that,” Roy said.

“ _Raptors_ did that,” Owen said. "They're intelligent."

“I think you’re mental,” Roy said.

Owen realized that he didn’t care. He could lecture them, but he wouldn’t bother. It had been a long day, his arm was still paining him, and he just didn’t have the strength to argue.

“I don’t care what you think,” Owen said. “Just remember this sign. That’s all. This sign will keep you safe tomorrow.”  

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.”

“You’re understand tomorrow. You’ll understand _everything._ Just _remember_ this sign. I don’t care if you believe me or not – _just remember this sign._ This sign will save your lives!”

“Do it again, let me see,” Maggie said.

Owen did it again. Maggie practiced. 

"I don't care if you believe me or not," Owen said.  "Just remember this sign!" 

“Oh come on, Maggie, you can’t be serious,” Roy said.

“Roy,” Maggie said, “Look at his face. He’s _scared._ For the first time since this whole thing started, he’s actually _scared._ Owen, do it again, let me practice…”

* * *

 

Pedro woke them up before daylight.

Owen woke up with only one working arm, and a spine that didn’t want to bend without crackling. Everyone looked tired, and scratchy-eyed. No-one had slept well.

They were all going to have to travel in one boat, and Pedro had them ditch all of their equipment except their weapons. Owen, having no weapon, and having his arms still chained, had nothing to prepare at all. They were ready to leave the house, even as the dawn outside began to overpower the weakling lamplight.

“It’s time,” Pedro said. “Inigo, open the door.”

The door opened, and the daylight streamed in. Alejo, Inijo and Joaquin buttonhooked out through the door. They fanned out across the yard, rifles ready.

“All clear!” Inigo reported.

“Everyone, out,” Pedro ordered.  

Julian yanked on the end of Owen’s chain. “Move!” he barked.

Owen followed him out.

It was a misty morning. The trees around the river were receding behind curtains of foggy air. The light was a delicate egg-shell grey, almost glowing. It was beautiful.

Julian pointed his rifle at Owen. “You, follow the captain. You’re going where we can see you.”

Owen thought about breaking into the mist, but it was just too thin to hide him before Julian’s bullets caught him. He ground his teeth, and followed Pedro, with Julian close behind him.

Pedro moved left, going around the side of the house, inside the perimeter guard of Joaquin. Pedro had left the sunglasses off for the first time this morning. His face was tense as he stared around into the shrouds of mist; teeth gritted, gaze jumping. He was as spooked as his men, Owen realized, although he was trying not to show it.

“Get that boat into the water, and quickly!” Pedro ordered Julian. He turned his back on the lean-to, taking up guard position next to Joaquin.  

“I’m on it,” Julian said, and moved under the lean-to.

Under the sloping roof was a boat, dragged up out of the water onto a little trailer. It was a long, lean wooden boat, like a pirogue, with an outboard engine, and three thwarts amidships. He’d seen boats just like this one, used to carry all kinds of freight up and down the river, both here and in the Congo. Owen didn’t think it had ever belonged to the farmers. It was more of a workhorse than a small _campesino_ family would need.

“You,” he snapped at Owen.   “Help me push it out.”

“Go to hell.”

Julian raised the rifle, but Pedro snapped at him. “We don’t have time for this! Just get a move on! I’ll guard him!”

Julian slung his rifle on his back, and gripped the boat’s gunwales. “One, two, and … _three,”_ he grunted, and heaved the boat down the mud to the water.

He followed the boat out, knee-deep in the water, and as the stern began to lift with the river he sprang over the gunwales. He threw the boat’s painter around the little jetty to hold the boat steady, and clambered into the stern. He turned the propellers down into the water, locked them into position, and started pulling on the cord to start the engine.

* * *

 

The door had opened. The humans had all come out, but they weren’t moving.

StripeSide was lying on her belly in the long grass above the house, watching. Around her, the other Real People kept down, too. It was one thing to know _intellectually_ that humans couldn’t see your bloodheat, but it was another thing to stand up openly with nothing but damp air to hide you. The house was surrounded by Real People – not only StripeSide’s pack, and TravelsOverWater’s pack, but SilverNose’s pack had arrived in the night as well. They were all following her orders, and lying low.  

StripeSide couldn’t see the humans, but their bloodheat was standing out. They were all outside the house, now. She could see FirstHuman, to her right, around the side of the house. They were fanned out around the house, and a couple of them were fussing around on that side of the house. The others were just standing there.

Why weren’t they moving? What were they doing? What were they waiting for?

Nobody was coming to help them. There was only one road. There was only one way out of this place, and they had to take it. StripeSide’s ambush had been laid carefully, but the humans weren’t coming.

“What are they doing?” she called softly. “What stands there, on that side of the house?”

There was a lean-to there, she remembered. Yes, there was: she could see the tiny temperature difference between the roof and the air.

There was silence. “We checked it,” BentTail said. “No weapons, no talking-tools.”

“They will come this way,” SnailEater said, from StripeSide’s right side. “They must. Our plans are perfect.”

“No _fighting_ plan is ever perfect,” WingWatch warned.

“We wait,” StripeSide ordered. “See what it is they do. We will change plans if necessary. FireMountain – can you see what it is they are doing from where you are? Can you give meaning to these movements?”

“I see nothing from here,” he called. “I am close to them. I can hear them, and smell them, but not see them.”

There was the sudden cough of an engine starting. The sound was a deep grumble on the air, startlingly loud. StripeSide could see a sudden flare of heat and hot fuel-smell under the lean-to.

“They have an engine under there?” she asked, startled.

“I know what that is!” TravelsOverWater shouted. “There is a boat there! A boat, to travel over the water! A boat, to carry them up the river! There is another way out of this place!”

“Why didn’t you destroy it?” StripeSide shouted, pushing herself up onto her hind legs. Her killing-claws flexed into the soil in anger.

“I didn’t know what it was!” BentTail yelled. “I’ve never seen one close up before! How was I supposed–!”  

“We can’t let them leave!” WingWatch said. “We’ll never catch up! StripeSide! You command here!”

“Attack!” StripeSide shouted.

* * *

 

_Raptors! Raptors, everywhere!_

There was no warning! They came so fast!  Maggie opened her mouth to scream a warning but it was already too late.  

She saw one leap high, flying through the air, with its great hooked claws out like a striking hawk. It collided with Joaquin’s chest, and Joaquin was down with a scream and a horrible meaty tearing sound.

Inigohad time to turn around, but he was too slow. Another raptor reached him faster than he could raise the AK47. His bullets  roared up into the sky, even as he went backwards with a raptor on his chest, ripping and tearing at him.

Cristian bolted straight into the mist, and the running raptors parted like a wave, and let the boy run between them without hurting him.

Roy turned and stared, face slack with surprise. 

Maggie saw it in a few split seconds, that for the rest of her life she would remember as a jigsaw of disconnected impressions.

Then she was moving.  She'd been in combat enough to know that movement was life, but she was moving too slowly.  She saw her own hands reaching out for Roy, as if her body was swimming through glue. Time was too slow, her mind was too slow, everything was too slow, and she was grabbing at Roy’s shoulder and shoving him with all her strength.

“Get back!” she screamed into Roy’s slack face, trying to break through his inertia. “Get back in there! Move! Move! Move!”

Then Rodrigo was dragging them both. The door was only a few feet away, and they were running together.  Alejo was in the doorway, firing wildly into the long grass. He was screaming at them to _Run! Run!_

Maggie leaped through the door.  Roy fell, crashing over onto his hands and rolling helplessly. Maggie heard the door slamming closed.  Alejo and Rodrigo dropped the iron bar across the door.

Something very powerful slammed into the door.  The whole door shook on its hinges. Alejo and Rodrigo had bolted the door just in time. There was a horrible scream from the other side.

Rodrigo jammed his rifle through the loophole. 

He fired off a wild burst, but something on the other side of the door grabbed his muzzle, and tried to yank it out of his grip. He yelled in fright and fought for it. There was a second of mad tugging back-and-forth, which Rodrigo won forcefully enough to stagger backwards.

He caught himself and braced the rifle against his shoulder, but there was nothing.  Whatever was there had already gone.

 _“Dios, Dios, Dios, Dios, Dios!”_ Alejo chanted.

“Where’s Inigo?” Rodrigo shouted into Alejo’s face.

“He didn’t make it!” Alejo shouted back.

“He was right behind me!”

“He’s dead! _Dios mio!”_

“Go to the window!” Rodrigo ordered. “See what happened to the captain! I’ll hold the door!”

Alejo turned, and jumped through the door to the other room.

There was another slam at the door.  The iron bar rattled. Dust dribbled from the roof.

Rodrigo backed up, watching the door. “Get in there, and get down!” he ordered Maggie without taking his eyes off the door.

Maggie bent to grab Roy by the shoulder.She looked down at her hand, and was shocked that it looked so steady. The shaking was all on the inside, she realized. Her stomach was weak, as if her blood had turned to water in her veins. 

She’d read all the books on Jurassic Park, she’d seen the old file footage, she’d interviewed Grant and Malcolm. She’d listened, and she’d taken notes, but she had _understood nothing!_    _This_ was what Grant had been talking about for twenty years. _This_ was why Ian Malcolm said he couldn’t sleep. _These_ were velociraptors.

“Oh, yes, that’s how it always starts,” Roy wheezed, “and then later, there’s running, and screaming! _Ha-ha-ha-ha!”_ He laughed shrilly, and pressed his fist over his mouth.

Maggie took his arm to pull him up.

She got Roy half-way up, but he sagged again. His breath was wheezing, shrilly, and he was holding his chest. His legs folded under him like rubber and he sat down hard, against the doorjamb where Grady had been last night.  He gripped her hands. His breath was squeaking now, shrilly, and she knew it was his lungs, not his voice.

“Where’s your medication?” she asked him, but he gripped her arms. His eyes were like saucers, looking over her shoulder. 

_There was something behind her._

Maggie turned. 

The cocaine shipment  was moving.

White powder was down the pile, tumbling to the floor. The cocaine was coming to life. The face that rose from the tumbling curtain of powder was as white as snow. Its long neck and head curved up out of the pile of cocaine.  An eye opened, a golden eye with a slit pupil.  

Maggie couldn't breathe.  She stared.

The powder drifted down, sifting, sliding, hissing softly. Broken bricks and powder was falling now, from shoulders and back and long haunches, as the velociraptor stood up.

It had been lying tightly curled under the cocaine shipment. It must have been there before they arrived. It had been lying there perfectly still, all night, watching, listening, hour after hour – and now, now that it was _needed,_ it was moving.

 _They’re intelligent,_ Grady had said.  

She found her hand dropping to her pocket, and gripping the gizzard-stone. She knotted her fingers around it, so that its hard edges dug into her palm.

The raptor’s face was a narrow reptilian wedge, and it turned to look at her. Binocular vision: the hallmark of a predator.  The  predator was turning to look at _her_.

“Shoot him, captain!” Alejo was yelling through the window.  Alejo did not know what was happening behind him. “Shoot Grady! Captain! Shoot Grady!”

Roy was on hands and knees, scrabbling for his inhaler. Maggie put herself in front of Roy.  

 _Kneel_ , Grady said. _Meet them in the eye. Do this._

Her hands came up into the arch Grady taught them last night.  She couldn’t look down at her hands to see if she was doing it right. She should have paid more attention last night!

<I am friendly,> she signed. 

Her breath was too short. She made the sign again, aware that her hands were shaking. Her tendons and wrists no longer seemed strong enough to hold her fingers steady.

<I am friendly.  I am friendly.>

And the long head turned away from her.  The raptor panned slowly across the room, and looked at Alejo.

Alejo put the barrel of the rifle up against the loophole.  He had no time to fire. The raptor moved so fast Alejo just crumpled, as if he’d been swatted.

“Alejo?” Rodrigo called from the other room.  “What was that?”

The white velociraptor whipped around, long tail snapping against the wall in a cloud of cocaine.

Maggie threw herself down. She felt the raptor spring over her body. There was a tornado of fire as Rodrigo fired his M16.

Maggie fell over Roy.  She heard a snarl, and the sound of something meaty tearing, as if someone was twisting the drumstick off a roast chicken.

When she had clawed her hair out of her eyes, the raptor was at the door.  She saw it pull up the iron bar with both fore-hands. It  shoved the door open, and sprang out with a snap of its long tail.

“They open doors!” she said. "They _do_ open doors!" 

Alejo and Rodrigo were both dead.  Alejo was lying on the floor in the corner as if he had fallen asleep there.  Rodrigo, on the other hand, was _very_ dead. Extremely dead.  She'd seen a _lot_ of dead soldiers in her time, but never one _quite_ that dead.  She winced, and looked away.  

Roy was unhurt, still sitting against the doorjamb, still wheezing for breath.

“Roy!” she said, scrambling over to him. 

He sucked heavily on his inhaler, eyes squeezed closed. “Go,” he wheezed. “Go.”

“No! I’m staying here!”

“Go…” he wheezed. “Journalist.  Go. Witness.”

“I’m not leaving you alone, idiot!”

He shook his head.  "You.  Came for raptors.  Found them.  Go!  Witness!" 

Maggie got to her feet.  She went to the window, and looked out through the loophole in the wall.

The tree and lean-to made a shady nook along the river bank. To her left was a boat, bobbing against the jetty. Julian was in the stern, standing up.  His rifle was levelled on something on the bank.  

Right in front of Maggie were Pedro and Grady, standing together. The men were pressed close, almost intimately close.  Pedro was pressing Grady back against himself, as if Grady was his little spoon. The pistol in Pedro’s hand was jammed under Grady’s bearded chin.  Grady had his back arched, and his head back.

And to Maggie's right were three velociraptors.  They were standing frozen in a loose arc around Grady and Pedro. 

“Get back!” Pedro yelled.

The raptors were standing frozen.  They weren't attacking.  They weren’t moving a step closer to Pedro.  Their talons were flexing, and their teeth were bared, but they were standing absolutely still.   

Maggie gasped, as she realized what she was looking at.  

_The most vicious predators ever to walk this earth,_ Alan Grant said.

Yet she was looking at velociraptors held at bay by one man’s will – not by force, but by their own intelligence. They knew what the pistol did. They knew what Pedro was threatening to do with it.  They were being held back by Pedro’s pistol - not pointed at them, but threatening to shoot Owen Grady. 

 _They're as intelligent as we are,_ Grady said. 

Even as she understood what she was seeing, the white one that had just left her appeared around the corner. It arrived just under Maggie’s window.  It too stopped dead, as soon as it saw Pedro's pistol, and understood what it was looking at.

 _Everything_ that had happened since Maggie had spoken to Claire Dearing suddenly made sense.

* * *

 

Owen could feel the cold knob of the pistol’s barrel under his jaw, as if it was trying to dig into his jugular. The force of the pistol kept his head up. He could hear the sound of the boat’s engine behind him, and he could feel Pedro’s breath on his ear.  He kept his eyes fixed on StripeSide.

Pedro had reacted with the speed of a trained infantryman. Owen had sprinted for freedom at the first snarl, but the chain had been free.  Pedro had leaped for the end of it. He’d moved so fast Owen didn’t even know he’d drawn the pistol before it was under his chin.

By the time StripeSide appeared, bracketed by SnailEater and WingWatch, they had been too late. Pedro was already holding the pistol under Owen’s jaw.  Owen knew the man had no conscience about using it.

Owen found himself staring at StripeSide, right in front of him, just a few yards away. She’d frozen as soon as she recognised the pistol.  

WingWatch flanked her sister on Owen’s left, and SnailEater was on Owen’s right. Owen was bracketed by velociraptors, pinned against the river bank between the side of the house and the boat’s lean-to.

“Step back,” Pedro ordered.

Owen felt himself jerked backwards by Pedro, and was obliged to take a step back.  Pedro stepped back, and StripeSide immediately matched him by stepping forward. 

They were a few yards from the boat.  Pedro was backing up slowly towards the jetty, but he was bracketed by velociraptors.  Every step Pedro took StripeSide matched.  

Now one of the Clouds joined them, sliding forward against the side of the house to join the hunt. His colours were fading from white to orange-and-black, which meant he was Nyiragongo – Barry’s favourite. Nyiragongo stalked against the side of the house. 

There was no sign of the tiny wobbly baby who had once sat inside Barry’s shirt in that implacable face.  His golden eyes were fixed on Pedro, unblinking. His head was low, talons grasping at the air.  There was blood on his talons.

Owen was pulled back a few more paces, as Pedro saw the fourth raptor arrive. StripeSide hissed, and slid forward a pace, filling in Pedro’s retreat with a gliding step. 

StripeSide was just a few yards away, but she couldn’t reach Owen. She knew exactly what the pistol would do to him. She snarled, but she could not strike down Pedro without endangering Owen’s life.  None of the raptors was making any sudden moves. They watched, and they waited, and they edged closer, one step at a time. 

 _“Mio Dios!”_ Pedro hissed in Owen’s ear. “What are they?”

“Dinosaurs,” Owen growled back. “Just like I told you.”

WingWatch snarled, showing her sharp teeth along the full length of her jaws.

Owen felt Pedro jerk, as his attention was pulled to WingWatch. The shift in his attention was enough for SnailEater to take a gliding step closer on the right.

“Get back!” Pedro jerked back toward StripeSide. “Or I'll blow his head off!" 

Pedro, Owen realized, was speaking _to_ her, not at her. Pedro was one of the rare few, like Lowery and Maria, who looked into a velociraptor’s eyes and saw a _person_ looking back. Even Owen had not seen the being inside the beast, until it was too late. 

StripeSide hissed, as if she understood Pedro's words.  Owen kept his hands out in the Stand Down sign. 

Pedro pulled Owen back another step, and StripeSide slid forward another step. StripeSide’s talons were curling and uncurling with frustration, but her head and neck did not snake from side to side in uncertainty. She was focused on Pedro; locked on …

Owen had been on the receiving end of that bloodcurdling stalk. He knew exactly what they were doing. He knew that StripeSide was keeping up her hissing deliberately, to hold Pedro’s attention on her. He knew that there had to be one more raptor somewhere behind him, and probably two.

Pedro had never been stalked before by an ambush predator. He probably did not even know that the blue-striped raptor was _not_ the most dangerous one.   He probably did not know that there _had_ to be one more raptor somewhere behind him.  

“Captain!” Julian yelled from somewhere behind Owen. “Jump for it, I’ll cover you!”

“They’re too fast!” Pedro said. He jerked Owen back another step.  StripeSide slid forward to close the gap.  

“Get back!” Pedro yelled at StripeSide.

She hissed at him in reply, as if she also heard the fear in Pedro’s voice. She was just a few yards away, her eyes unblinking.

“Give it up, Pedro! Shoot me, and you’ll both die,” Owen said.  "You have to let me go."  

“You’re coming with us,” Pedro snarled. “Step back,” and Owen was obliged to take another step backwards.

StripeSide brought her talons up under her throat and signed.

<Tell him to release you!  And I will let him live!>

“What the hell was that?” Pedro snarled.

“She says you should let me go,” Owen said.

<Now!> StripeSide signed. <Tell him, now!>

“She says if you let me go, she'll let you go.”

“Does she think I’m stupid? My men are dead!” Pedro snarled. “As soon as I let you go, she’ll jump me. You’re coming with us in that boat!”

<He says we will leave in the boat,> Owen signed. His hands were still chained, but there was enough play to sign. 

“You tell her I’ll blow your head off if she makes any sudden moves!” Pedro snarled.

<Not acceptable!> StripeSide signed instantly.  

“I’ll do it, bitch!” Pedro snarled at her, jabbing the pistol harder against Owen’s throat. “Move, and I’ll blow his head off!” 

StripeSide dropped her head and hissed, a long metallic scrape of threat and rage.

“Back!” Pedro pulled Owen backwards, and Owen felt something hard against his heels. He scrambled for it and stepped up, and realized that he was standing on the jetty. StripeSide slid forward.

“Back!” Pedro said, and pulled Owen back another step.

Owen noticed SlidingRocks for the first time, trying to slip along the shallows on his extreme left, trying to outflank Pedro from the water. The fifth raptor – the ambush he’d _known_ would be there.

“Captain, there’s another one!” Julian called. “On your three o’clock!”

And another raptor! Fifth and sixth raptors.

“No sudden moves, bitch!” Pedro said, and the pistol jabbed harder. “I don’t care if there are a hundred of you, as long as I have this gun right here!”

<He sees SlidingRocks!> Owen signed.

SlidingRocks froze. <Moving, not,> she signed.

Another step back. “Julian, get ready to cast off!” Pedro ordered Julian, urgently.

“Hurry!” Julian called, and his voice was a lot closer to Owen’s back. Owen could sense, rather than see, that he was alongside the boat.

<I will trade,> StripeSide signed, still standing on the shore. <You, for them.>

“She’ll let you go,” Owen said. “She wants me. Not you.”

“You’re lying. You’ve been lying from the start. All you ever do is fucking _lie,_ and _lie_ , and _lie!”_

“Everything I have ever told you has been the truth,” Owen said.

“Lies! Typical fucking American!”

“Look at her, and tell me she isn’t exactly what I said she was!” Owen said. “She won’t stop coming until she gets me! You have to leave me here, or she’ll follow you to the ends of the world.”

Another step backward, and now Owen could see the stern of the boat, and Julian sitting in the boat with his rifle aimed at StripeSide.

“If she’ll follow you to the ends of the world, she’ll follow you to La Leona, and the world can have a good long fucking _look_ at her!” Pedro snarled.   “We’re getting into this boat! Julian! Are you ready?”

“I’m covering you!” Julian said. “Step, now!”  

Owen saw StripeSide take the first step onto the other end of the jetty.  Pedro and StripeSide faced each other down the jetty; two implacable and dangerous enemies. 

“Cast off, now!” Pedro snapped.

Owen felt Pedro stepping backwards off the jetty.

And then too many things happened all at once. The pistol went away, and Owen felt an arm grab him, yank him backwards into the boat.  He fell back into the bottom of the boat.  He heard StripeSide scream in rage, and the boat’s engine roared.  

Owen got his hands on the gunwales of the boat and was dragging himself up.  The boat was already surging bows-up, gathering speed away from the jetty.  He felt the wind in his hair. Pedro’s shadow dropped over Owen.  

Pedro was levelling the pistol astern. Owen heard the shots, and he saw the gun’s slide leaping in Pedro's hand.  Pedro was  shooting at StripeSide!

“No you fucking don’t!” Owen roared.

He lunged for the pistol. He grabbed Pedro’s wrists and tried to pull the shorter man off balance, fighting for the weapon. The boat rocked wildly under them, and Julian yelled a warning. Owen wrenched at Pedro’s wrists, dragged at the pistol. He heard the crack of a shot, and something punched him in the stomach, and suddenly he was falling.

The pistol was falling with him, spinning free, and he was falling backwards out of the boat.  The sky whirled around him as the water came up to meet him.

* * *

 

Lead pellets were passing over StripeSide’s head, like someone whipping their killing-claws through canvas. Splinters leaped up from the wood just in front of her nose, but nothing thumped into her body, and she opened her eyes to see why.

The boat was moving, and FirstHuman was standing up in it fighting the enemy. They were struggling over the weapon that had been firing at StripeSide. There was another shot, and FirstHuman was falling from the enemy’s grip. He was tumbling backwards into the deep water.

_He was in the water!_

StripeSide leaped to her feet and screamed.

FirstHuman’s head broke the surface in the boat’s wake, and StripeSide could smell blood. He thrashed, and then he was gone, underwater again.

She screamed at him, frantic. He was going to drown! 

She couldn’t dive in there! Deep water was filled with monsters! But if _she_ could smell his blood, then monsters could too! The monsters could not have him! He was _hers_ _!_

She threw herself into the river.  

She was instantly trapped in the cold grip of the water, overwhelmed and disoriented.

She tried to kick with her legs, as she’d seen humans do. She fought to raise her head above the water, but the water was in her eyes, and up her nose. Her claws and talons were mighty but they thrashed uselessly at the water. 

She was being swept away, inexorably, as helpless as a leaf.  She couldn’t even save herself, let alone FirstHuman. They were both going to drown, and for a moment she gave up hope. The river was as powerful as death itself.  Deep water was going to carry them to their deaths, whether she fought or not.

Her hind feet were thrashing under her, and her killing-claw collided with something underwater. She yelped.  Who knew what horrors lurked down there?

She squeezed her legs under her tail in a reflex cringe – and in that instant she _knew_ how to swim.

She couldn’t fight the wall of water, but she could use its strength for herself!  She pulled both hind legs up tightly under her tail, and her spine thrashed from side to side.  She could not paddle like a mammal, but she could swim like a crocodile!  Her talons were useless for swimming, but her long spine and thick tail propelled her forward.  

“Wait!” she screamed. “I am coming!”

She could no longer smell blood in the air. He was downstream of her.

She turned in the water, thrusting with her tail. Her whole body was submerged, just her eyes and nostrils over the water. The water broke in a wave over her face.

“I’m coming!” she shouted, knowing he couldn’t hear her.

She heard the sound of a human voice, just a sharp bark of panic, and knew he was just ahead of her.

“I’m here!” she shouted, “I’m here, I’ve got you!” and a second later she did.

The water smelled of blood, but he’d managed to keep his head above the water. She caught a glimpse of his face. His fingers broke the surface, swatting toward her face, and she collided bodily with him.  His hand grabbed at her face, and slid off.

For a moment he was gone, and she realized she had driven him under. She grabbed beneath her with her forehands, and suddenly he burst up out of the water at her side, coughing.  One arm latched around her neck. His other arm came up to meet it, and his hands clamped around her throat as if he would never let go. His face was close by hers, wet and gasping for air.

“I’ve got you!” she said.

She couldn’t swim for long – not like this. His weight hung on her left side, and he was making her yaw in the water. His hands were clamped around her neck.  His knees battered against her flank, trying to swim in the mammal way.  She couldn’t swim like this. He was going to capsize them both.

“Get on my back!” she shouted, aware that the chill sinking into her antorbital fenestra was even sapping her voice.

He couldn’t hear her! He couldn’t hear a word she said – and with her forehands underwater she couldn’t sign to him. He didn’t understand!

If the alpha wasn’t getting what she wanted, she must make it happen herself! If he wouldn’t get _up,_ she would have to get _down!_

She took a breath, closed her nictitating membrane, and thrust her head under the surface.

The water buffeted her face, trying to claw her eyes open. She felt FirstHuman’s fingers clench at her neck in panic, but she was committed. She thrust herself beneath the water.  She twisted laterally under the water, and back up to the surface.

She thrust her head up to the whirling white glow on the surface of the water. The water broke about her, and her body was still submerged, but this time FirstHuman lay on her back. He was still clinging to her neck, but now his body lay along her spine, and she twisted again.  

Her roll to get under him had towed _him_ under the surface as well. He was coughing and gasping – but he was safe! She turned her head to see him out of one eye. His face was just behind the crest of her neck. He could feel her under him, because he stopped thrashing. 

“Stay still,” she commanded. “Don’t move. Let me swim.”

Now it was time to get out of the river. She couldn’t swim forever – the cold was sapping her strength and draining her bloodheat. They had to break out of the current, or drown anyway.

She submerged her face up to the eyes again, thrust her tail and spine against the water to pick up speed, and this time she swam on an even trim. She aimed for the nearest bank.

It was difficult to cut across the current. The river seemed to have grown in power. She could feel the current trying to broach her and roll her over. The trees along the river seemed to be whirring by overhead, blurred by the speed of her passage.

The water was insanely strong – and surely this was only a river? This was not the sea. This was not a lunar tide.   Surely rivers did not roar at such speed, with such hungry power? Surely this river…

_The falls!_

The water was speeding up towards the falls! She could not follow this current any further! She must get out of the river, now, or die!

She twisted in the water, using FirstHuman’s weight as a pivot, and the water was coming into her face now, trying to drive her backwards!

And it was so powerful! _This_ was what humans meant when they talked about their gods!

She thrashed her tail and spine as hard as she could, but she felt no closer to the trees. The current was trying to loosen FirstHuman’s grip, trying to peel him off her back. The water was breaking over her face, dashing into her eyes, and blocking her nose. Her eyes fixed on the treetops, swirling over her head. Closer! Closer! She doubled her efforts! Faster! Faster! Her muscles ached, her lungs burned.

She had never run this fast – never knew she could run this fast – never knew how little strength and stamina she really had! Her nostrils snorted water at every beat of her tail, burning down her throat. The trees were coming closer, but it _wasn’t enough!_ Her heart was going to burst, trying to bring those trees closer!

And then the water seemed to be chopping at her, rather than slicing. The river was splashing and breaking, and something under the water sliced at her belly like a knife, and then another, and she dropped her claws, and hooked on.

She stopped, short.

The water roared over her in a wave, now that she was no longer swimming. Its full power drove FirstHuman off her back, but she was faster. She shot out her forehand and snagged her talons around the chain.

“I’ve got you,” she said, grimly.

She stood up.

The water battered at her body, and then the current was dragging at her legs, trying to pull them out from under her, but her killing-claws were anchored deep. Each step felt like dragging the Mad Giant Person, but she made it. Her muscles shook. Her legs felt as weak as stalks.

First Human found his feet on the bottom, and staggered after her, still locked into the other end of the chain. And then between one step and the next the lethal current was just an innocent ripple of water, as this little river would never have tried to kill anyone.

They were safe.

StripeSide’s legs were shaking under her. She dropped the chain. Her own body was too heavy to lift, and she dropped to all fours, chest first onto the mud.

FirstHuman collapsed onto his knees at her side, as if his own waterlogged clothing was too heavy to bear. He pushed himself up, and managed to stagger another two steps up the muddy bank, before he fell again.

She rested her head on the mud, and let her breath out in a deep groan. She had never felt so exhausted in her life – not even after her battle with the Mad Giant Person. Every inch of her body hurt. Muscles that had never worked before were twitching like electric cables, outraged by their brutal treatment.

“I hate water,” she groaned.

 _Blue,_ FirstHuman sang.

She opened her eyes, surprised that she had closed them at all. FirstHuman was lying on his back, and the sharp tang of his blood woke her up.

He was still bleeding! The delicate human veins and rapid hearts meant they could bleed to death in minutes – not good, when you were trying to keep them alive! They didn’t have conscious control over their own vascular systems – he couldn’t stop his blood-loss by himself.

She pushed herself up again, and stooped over him.

His hands were pressed to his belly. His clothes were soaked, but fresh blood was rinsing into the wet fabric. His eyes were red-rimmed from the water, but they were clear glittering eyes, and to her astonishment he bared his teeth to her in a smile.

 _Blue!_ he sang.

“How can you _smile_ at a time like this?” She reached to his shirt with her talons and ripped the fabric off him. She bundled it up, and he moved his hands to allow the sodden cloth to be pressed against his wound.

He knew what she was trying to do. His fingers gripped the ball of fabric and pressed them firmly, but fresh blood ran out from under his fingers and down the cream of his skin.

_Blue! Youjumpedin!  Youjumped!_

“Stop talking, you idiot!” she ordered him, pressing down on his belly. “You need your air!”

It wasn’t working. The wet shirt wasn’t absorbent enough. It was already waterlogged, and it wouldn’t mop up much blood.

And, oh no, he was bleeding out of his back too! More blood was running down to the river from under his body! The lead pellet had gone all the way through him and out of the other side.  He was wet, and cold, and bleeding, and there were holes in his stomach and his back! 

She needed help! She needed help, or he would bleed to death right in front of her!

 _Iknew youwouldcome lookingforme,_ he said, and his head rolled weakly on the mud. His teeth bared in another smile. _MybigbeautifulburningBlue._ His voice was getting weaker, as if his lungs were running out of strength to push air into his voice. He coughed. 

She didn’t know what to do! She’d never been responsible for keeping a human _alive_ before! There were too many things wrong with him! He’d healed her and her sisters so many times, he made it look so easy, but she did not even know where to start.

“Stop bleeding!” she begged him. “Why can’t you just close your blood vessels? For pity’s sake, why won’t you stop _bleeding!”_

The trees seemed to be staring down at her. The current of the river roared loudly just a few strides away, uncaring. She stood up, turning her head around, but there was no bloodheat moving through the trees.

She had never been so alone, so cold, so small. Her human was dying, and her fear made her a tiny weak hatchling again, helpless and alone and cold in a huge empty world.

She opened her jaws and screamed, and with all her strength she shouted across every frequency she could.

“Help me! Somebody! Somebody help me! My human is dying! My human is _dying!”_

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cliffhangers make my evil little heart really happy. 
> 
> But don't worry, the happy ending is coming up soon!


	7. Revelations

 

The party reached the edge of the town, and came to a stop. Maggie was finally able to catch up with the dinosaurs who had been carrying Grady’s stretcher at an implacable jog all day.

It had been a race to get here. Grady was bleeding, but he was alive. Basic first aid could slow his bleeding – but he needed surgery, and soon. There was no 911 in the rainforest – no ambulances, no paramedics, no possibility of someone with medical training just passing by. He needed surgery, or he would die, and there was only one place he would get it.

The Colombians who had found him had made an emergency stretcher out of two long poles and a few jackets strung inside-out, while Maggie was talking Cristian down from his tree. They’d had to leave Roy behind with a Colombian escort, because at his age he would slow them down too much. Then they raced downstream along the narrow forest trails – humans and dinosaurs together.

Now they were here, on the outskirts of San Judas Tadeo, and they’d come to a stop.

So close, and yet they were _stopping?_

“What’s wrong?” Maggie asked.

She looked around, and realized with a prickle of alarm that there were no humans around her. She didn’t feel comfortable alone around velociraptors, after what she’d seen them do.  She walked forward to the lead of the column where the other human beings were, with Grady's stretcher.

“What’s wrong?” Maggie asked the short woman, Maria. “Why have they stopped?”

Maria turned to her. “They have never gone into a town before,” she said.

“Once we go in there, nothing will ever be the same,” Jorge explained. He was holding one end of the stretcher. A velociraptor named MoonRain was holding the other end.

“They’re crossing the Rubicon,” Maggie said, but Maria and Jorge looked at her blankly. “They’re changing the rules of the game,” she explained.

“StripeSide is changing the game,” Maria said.

The blue dinosaur named StripeSide seemed to be their leader. It was standing under the last few trees before the cleared gardens of the villagers. It was staring out at the buildings that interrupted the green backdrop of forest, as if it wasn’t sure of what to do next.

The greenish dinosaur with the impressive scars jogged up to the blue one, and butted at it with its head. The blue one turned its head, and looked back along the column, its jaws open with a slight panting. Then it looked down at the stretcher, where Grady lay on his side, half-conscious. Then it looked out at the town again. It seemed to be trying to make up its mind.

“Where’s the hospital?” Maggie asked Maria. “Maybe we can carry him in?”

“It’s right over there!” Cristian said, pointing with his hand to a large yellow building. “The MSF clinic, on the square. _Senora,_ tell them I live here. These people are my friends. Come on!”

He trotted out into the sunshine, beckoning them all to follow him with one hand. The boy seemed tiny in that moment, dwarfed by the monsters he was leading – tiny, but important.

“Come on!” he called back to them. “I will go with you, and they’ll know you’re friendly!” He jogged away down the road between the kitchen gardens

Maria turned to StripeSide, and began signing with the quick snapping language that Grady had taught Maggie and Roy last night.

Grady was lying on his side on the stretcher, his back and stomach plastered with everything they could find that could slow his bleeding. He moved, right then, with a little grunt of pain.  

Grady’s movement seemed to make up the blue dinosaur’s mind. It rocked back on its thick hind legs and barked once at the sky. Then it put its head down and jogged resolutely after Cristian.

“Decision made,” Jorge said. “Come on.” He moved forward, gripping the stretcher.

The decision was made, and the dinosaurs seemed in a hurry to get it over with quickly. They jogged up the last of the road after Cristian at a run. They rushed between the kitchen gardens, and sandy streets, between shacks and cinderblock houses. They ran around the corner of the church, and into the main square of the town itself.

San Judas Tadeo was a poor place. The town was stretched by displaced _campesinos_ , driven off their land by poverty and fear of the Gomez cartel. There were too many people in San Judas Tadeo living in the enforced idleness of grinding poverty – people who had nothing better to do and nothing better to look forward to every day, to than to sit around in the shade and watch the calendar pass.    There was nothing here that could be sold, nothing that could be built, nothing to do, and nowhere to go. 

The appearance of dinosaurs in their midst changed everything. The people fled in all directions.

Maggie couldn’t blame them. Dinosaurs! Prehistoric monsters with big teeth! The snarling, and the snapping, and the horrible train-brakes shrieking! _Anyone_ would run for cover!

 “It’s all right!” Cristian yelled as he ran, and his voice took that moment to break. He ran, waving his hands and pointing back at the dinosaurs on his heels. “It’s me, Cristian Guerrero! They’re friendly! They’re not with La Leona! They’re with me!”

“It’s all right,” Maria yelled, running alongside the stretcher. “They’re friendly!”

The people of San Judas Tadeo weren’t buying that. They didn’t hesitate, or stare, or waste time in doubting their eyes – they just ran for their lives, as if the people of San Judas Tadeo were _used_ to being visited by the worst of humanity.

Uh-oh, Maggie thought, her instincts twanging.   All they needed now was some fool dragging out his grandpa’s AK47 and opening fire. But the people of San Judas Tadeo were scattering, and the square was empty, under a pair of broad shady trees.

Cristian led them straight across the square.

The clinic had been built on the edge of the square. It was a blocky yellow building, utilitarian and unimaginative. The doors facing the square were open, up a concrete ramp.

The staff must have been alerted by the screams outside, because a young woman with a bright sash of silk wrapped around her blonde hair ran out onto the ramp. She stopped dead on the doorstep, blue eyes popping wide as she saw the dinosaurs.

“Dr Somersby!” Cristian said, running up to her. “Dr Somersby – that man is hurt! He needs help! Please help him, please help him!”

The dinosaur named StripeSide skidded to a halt, hooked claws tapping the soil, and stared up at the woman in the doorway. It snarled.

The woman grabbed the door jamb as if she was going to throw herself inside and slam the doors, and Maggie recognised her.

“Somersby?” Maggie yelled, incredulous. “Claire Somersby?”

Somersby’s eyes turned in Maggie’s direction, drawn by the sound of her own name.

“Maggie?” she asked, shocked. “What are you – what are those – how did – Oh my God, is Section Twenty with you?”

“It’s a long story!” Maggie said, charging up the ramp to her. She grabbed Somersby’s shoulder, and pointed to the approaching stretcher. “Ignore the dinosaurs for one second, okay – we’ve got an injured man here. He’s been shot in his stomach, and he needs…”

“Yes,” Somersby shook herself as she saw the stretcher. Somersby might be as stunned by the sight of dinosaurs as Maggie had been, but she had a patient, and that she understood. “You! Bring him in here!” She pointed over Maggie’s shoulder, commanding dinosaurs with an imperious index finger, and then whirled away inside.

“Come inside,” Maggie yelled over her shoulder and followed Somersby. The stretcher was carried in through the doors behind her, and suddenly the long corridor inside the hospital was _way_ too full of dinosaurs, waving their tails and snapping their teeth.  

“You! Put him in there! In there! On the table!” Somersby snapped at Jorge, pointing to a room to one side of the entry hall. She turned and shouted into the airless shadows of the clinic. “Rosa! Carlo! Prep for emergency trauma surgery!”

Maria translated with flying hands, and the stretcher was carried into the side room. Grady was dropped onto the table, stretcher and all, with a grunt of pain.

“Where am I?” he mumbled. “Blue?”  

Somersby was already bending over him, unhooking her stethoscope from around her neck, peeling back his eyelids and calling to him.

“Hello, can you hear me?” she called to Grady. “My name is Claire Somersby, I’m a doctor and I’m going to help you.” Her hands were pulling aside Grady’s shirt and exploring the temporary dressings, exploring to see what her job was going to be.  “Carlo! Rosa! Pablito! Adult male with a gunshot wound to the lower abdomen! We need to operate, and ignore the dinosaurs! Rosa, there you are! Yes, I know, it’s a dinosaur. There are more outside. Pablito! Where’s Carlo?”

StripeSide was looking over from the other side of the table, staring at Somersby’s hands on Grady’s body as if judging them. It dropped its toothy snout to Grady, where he was moving feebly on the table. It reached out its talons to him, and seemed about to lift the rough field dressing on his side.  

 _“NO!”_ Somersby shouted at the dinosaur, throwing herself over Grady. “Get your hot meat-breath _away_ from _my_ patient!” she yelled fiercely up at the dinosaur.

The blue dinosaur snapped its head upright, startled. It stared at the human who’d just yelled at it, as if it couldn’t believe it.

“You heard me!” Somersby yelled, waving her hand at the dinosaur. “Go away, and let me do my job! And the rest of you! All of you! Dinosaurs and people! Get out of here! Go! OUT!”

The raptor cocked its head to one side, and Maggie realized it was nonplussed by being shouted at. Maggie caught her breath. She’d seen this raptor kill Joaquin with a single strike, and here was tiny Claire Somersby yelling at it to go away as if it was a big annoying Labrador!

But Somersby had no time for dinosaurs. She’d already bent down over Grady again, dismissing the dinosaur from her attention as an irrelevant distraction.

Her assistants had arrived, and they were getting to work. They were working with the speed of a practiced team who had operated on rather more trauma patients than any of them wanted to. Landmines, Maggie remembered – landmines, everywhere.

“We’d better go,” Maggie said.

“Blue,” Jorge said.

The blue dinosaur was in the way, and it seemed to understand. It narrowed its eyes and snarled – a threat, if the doctor failed to keep Grady alive – and then it backed away from the table.  

* * *

 

StripeSide stood at the back of the room, and watched. Everyone else had left the room, but StripeSide would not leave – not yet.

This was a strange place, she thought, filled with frightening smells. The building stank of human blood, and pus, and death, but it also smelled of the stinging liquid that FirstHuman had once used to clean the Real People’s bites and scratches. There was a very old human in the next room, and he smelled like death, but the building also smelled like newly-birthed human babies.

Death, and birth; the human cycle of life. This was a place where sick and injured humans came to be healed, or to die.

FirstHuman was here to be _healed._

The healers were still working over him. She could smell his blood, but the healers’ voices were calm, not upset. Their bloodheat had betrayed their shock at the sight of the Real People, but then the pale-haired alpha human had cried out to them, and they had bent down over FirstHuman. They were working diligently, ignoring StripeSide’s supervision.

StripeSide wasn’t used to humans just _ignoring_ her, but she found it reassuring. The healers were paying no attention to her, as if only FirstHuman mattered to them right now. These, she decided, were humans with a sensible grasp on dinosaur priorities.

She did not know what was in the tube leading into FirstHuman’s arm, but she knew that humans couldn’t consciously control any part of their own vascular systems, so maybe it was refilling his blood somehow. His bloodheat looked as if it was rising nicely. His heart was beating steadily – no frantic fluttering pulse now. He no longer smelled like cold sweat and pain.

He was all right, she decided, for now.

StripeSide manoeuvred around and left the room, careful not to bump her tail into anything. Human buildings were designed tall, to accommodate human height, not wide to accommodate long swinging tails. She walked down the corridor toward the open door, trying not to bump her tail or hocks against anything that might disturb the ancient one’s sleep. Her killing-claws clicked on the smooth floor.

She went out through the door, and stood on the top of the ramp, bouncing lightly on her hocks. She was ready to face any challenge. She hissed out at the town around her and tapped her killing-claws on the cement under her.

The rest of the Real People were spread out across the open patch of ground under the shade of the two broad trees. Most of them got up as they saw her coming out. The humans, including the stranger with the long dark hair and the loud voice, were sitting at the side of the building, talking.

WingWatch leaped up and sprang toward her. She came to a stop at the foot of the ramp, and hissed up at her. “How does he fare?”

“He sleeps,” StripeSide answered. “They work still, but he no longer bleeds, and they seem confident.” She signed the answer as well, for HighClimber and SnoresLoudly.

“He is strong,” WingWatch said approvingly.

StripeSide turned her head this way and that, and surveying the town around her. It seemed a very different sort of place to the Island of Clouds. That place had been brighter, and filled with plastic and glass. This place was filled with sand, and crumbling tar, with grass growing through cracks. It felt older – it felt _inhabited._ She liked that.

“What do we do now?” SnailEater asked.

“Yes, the important cat has escaped from the shopping-bag,” WingWatch said, using one of FirstHuman’s favourite phrases in honour of his absence.

“We have been seen, and we are being seen,” TravelsOverWater said dourly. “War will come to the Pack, now. War is inevitable.” She looked around, suspiciously. “They fear us. Humans always attack what they fear.”

StripeSide looked around. She could see their bloodheat inside windows, and around corners. They were watching the Real People.

Secrecy was not safety, StripeSide reminded herself. She _knew_ that. The only way to keep the Pack safe was by declaring themselves to the humans, and demanding to be recognised.

They’d taken the first step. They’d come out from under the trees.

That had been the easy part. The difficult part was going to be persuading these humans that the Real People meant them no harm. The humans who lived here had panicked at the sight of the Real People, and fled like chickens in all directions. Not even the presence of HighClimber, SnoresLoudly and LoudVoice was enough to convince them to come out.

She remembered WingWatch’s warning, and looked TravelsOverWater.

“I command here,” she said to TravelsOverWater.

TravelsOverWater hiss-snapped, teeth clacking loudly. “You command here, Alpha of Alphas.”

“You will gather the Pack’s juveniles – all that can travel – and any of the Pack who do not wish to live with humans. You will go away with them, as far as you can go, and there you will stay in solitude.” She was aware that WingWatch was translating her words for HighClimber and SnoresLoudly.

“Go where?” TravelsOverWater asked, her eyes narrowing.

“South,” StripeSide said. “You will cross the humans’ border, and cross the great river, and go as far south as you _can_ go, and still find forest. Your great mother did not put all of her fledglings into one boat, and in that tradition I will also not put all of our people in the same place.”

“I will do this, ” TravelsOverWater said. “Yes, this I will do.” She looked satisfied.

“This command I give to you because you have done this before,” StripeSide said, certain now that this was a good idea. “A war may come, and a war may be lost, but the Pack _must_ survive.”

“I will do my duty to the Pack,” TravelsOverWater said, pointedly, “as I have _always_ done.”

Oh, yes, getting her predecessor out of her way was _definitely_ a good idea!

“You are wise, great TravelsOverWater, Alpha of Alphas of the Southern Real People.” She pulled the new name out of her imagination.

“Alpha of Alphas of the Southern Real People!” WingWatch repeated, cheerfully, backing up her sister instantly, as if the new title was the greatest thing she’d ever heard. She dropped her jaws wide, and snarled gutturally at TravelsOverWater.  “You will command in the South!”

“I will command there,” TravelsOverWater agreed. She matched WingWatch’s snarling teeth with her own, hissing at her over the width of the road.

“Humans approach,” WoodAsh said.

A moment later, a whole group of humans appeared all at once, around the corner of the building marked CANTINA. They were walking all together in a nervous little knot, like wary prey, ready to flee at a slight sound.

They were led by a human child, who was hopping and skipping in front of them, and calling back to them _Comeon! Comeon! Theyarefriendly! Comeandmeetthem! Papacomeon!_

StripeSide recognised the young one who had been captured with FirstHuman. The child was followed closely by a plump man, who seemed to be trying to slow the child down by reaching out for him and grabbing his hand.

“Now that has the look of a deputation,” WingWatch said, watching the humans approaching. She stalked forward to flank her sister, as she always did.

“I doubt they are here to lodge a hunting dispute,” StripeSide observed. “No sudden moves. We don’t want to scare them away.”

The child managed to free himself from the grasp of the man, and dashed over to LongHairLoudVoice, singing to her. The boy’s sudden run provoked the rest of the humans to break into a jog as well, with a sudden cry of alarm from the plump one.

StripeSide stood on the ramp of the healing-place, and watched without moving.

LoudVoice reached out to the boy, and wrapped her arms around him in affection. They sang back and forth to each other. The round man reached them, and then LoudVoice sang to the man, pointing to HighClimber.

The man sang at some length, gesturing with his hands. He gestured to the boy, and to the town around them, and then pointing off towards the western horizon. HighClimber shook her head, and turned around. She pointed to StripeSide.

The plump man reached for his boy’s shoulder with one hand, and pointed to HighClimber, but HighClimber shook her head again. She pointed again to StripeSide, and sang firmly to them, pointing at StripeSide.

The humans turned to look at StripeSide.

“All eyes are upon you, sister,” WingWatch said.

“I can see that, thank you,” StripeSide said.

She wished she had feathers still that she could raise in acknowledgement of their eyes, but she would not make any moves that might be taken as aggressive by mammals. In effect, this meant she could make no moves at all. She waited.

The plump human was looking at StripeSide. For a moment he just stared at her, and she stared at him. He did not look away from her stare, as humans often did, but met her gaze with a respectful stare of his own.

He sang something to her.

 _Shedoesnot understandSpanish_ , HighClimber sang. She turned to StripeSide.

<This child is his offspring,> HighClimber signed. <He says we saved his offspring from the Lioness. He says he is grateful, because the Lioness is the enemy of this town, and for that the town is grateful too.>

“His offspring?” StripeSide said.

“The Lioness is the alpha of the war-parties, who prey on the humans who live in this, our forest,” MoonRain said. “My human has told me frightening stories about her cruelty.”

“Her pack attacked my bond-mate,” StripeSide snarled with the memory of her rage.

The humans had finished singing. HighClimber turned to StripeSide.

<Speak, and I will translate for you,> HighClimber offered.

<Necessary, not!> WingWatch said, with a snap of her teeth that made the humans all flinch away from her. <StripeSide can speak for herself!>

<Clarify?> StripeSide said.

<Because,> WingWatch hissed, signing slowly for effect, <there is a chalk-board, right there, under that tree.>

She turned her long neck, and StripeSide followed her gaze.

“This _is_ what the Great Project is for, after all, is it not?” WingWatch said aloud, in case any of the Real People had missed the point.

<Bid them follow me!> StripeSide signed to HighClimber. She sprang off the concrete ramp in a single leap.

She moved a little too fast, and her sudden leap startled the humans. All of them took a rapid leap away from her – all except the round one and the child.

The round leader jerked, his muscles going tight, but he did not jump away in fear. He was afraid, but he was hiding his fear from his fellow humans, which could only mean he was their alpha. He might be small and round, but he had courage, this human.

Ah, yes. That was why La Leona hated him enough to steal his offspring. There could be only _one_ alpha.  

She trotted off, tail high.

HighClimber and SnoresLoudly were squawking and gesturing at the other humans to follow StripeSide. It took a visible effort for the round-bellied leader to follow StripeSide, but he did, and his companions followed closely behind him.

StripeSide led them under the tree – and sure enough, there was the chalkboard, pinned up against the trunk of the tree. Small benches were scattered around it, as if a lesson had been interrupted by the arrival of the Real People. There was a plastic bowl under the chalk-board, with pieces of chalk in it.

It was difficult to pick up such a tiny thing between her talons, but she had been practicing for a year.   She picked up the chalk between two bent talons, so that the tip protruded out in front of her knuckles, and turned around.

The humans were all watching her. Even HighClimber, who like TravelsOverWater thought the Great Project was foolish, was watching her, waiting to see what she was going to do with the chalk.

StripeSide could feel the weight of her duty bearing down on her. The Real People were depending on her judgement. Not only the Real People watching her now, but all of them, scattered over thousands of miles of rainforest.  

The human alpha was watching closely.

They were _all_ watching her, humans and dinosaurs, and StripeSide had the sudden feeling that she was balanced on the edge of a cliff. Suddenly she wanted to throw down the chalk and flee back into the safety of the forest. She had practiced the Great Project for a year, but she was far from ready for this! She should have worked at it for another year, or two, or three! Had she worked enough? Was she prepared? She had gambled all, but was it going to work? Would they even recognise her attempt for what it was supposed to be?

What would she do if they did not?

 _Relax!_ she commanded herself. _She_ was the Alpha of Alphas now. She _must_ be ready for this moment, whether she felt ready or not.

Her doubts had lasted only a second – not long enough for the humans to perceive.  

She turned to the chalk-board, reached out her forehand, and with the chalk gripped tightly she drew out the letters.

MY NAME IS STRIPESIDE.

She could hear the gasps of astonishment from the humans. Cries of shock, of disbelief, of delight.

 _Yes,_ she thought, fiercely! _Look at my words!_

I AM A DINOSAUR.  I AM THE LEADER OF MY PEOPLE.

StripeSide turned her head around to look at them, and caught sight of TravelsOverWater and HighClimber, standing side by side. In spite of humans’ blindness to bloodheat, HighClimber was matching TravelsOverWater’s expression of befuddled amazement. The truth dawned on StripeSide. TravelsOverWater would never see the importance of the Great Project – _because HighClimber couldn’t read either._

RoundAlpha was leaning forward. He’d taken a step toward her, and she turned to face him, and held out her forehand to him.

He jerked away and stared down at her talons as if immediately assuming the worst, but after a moment of hesitation he reached out his hand. She held perfectly still, restraining the urge to snarl at him, and let him take the chalk from between her talons.

RoundAlpha stepped up close to her side, and raised the chalk to the board. With thumbs, a human could get a much firmer, more controlled grip on the chalk. He did not hestitate, but wrote under her words.

MY NAME IS VIRGILIO GUERRERO AND I AM THE MAYOR OF SAN JUDAS TADEO. 

She examined the words. Mayor – was that his rank? Yes, she decided, it must be.

He was still writing, the little piece of chalk squeaking and ticking on the board.  

YOU SAVED MY SON FROM LA LEONA.  YOU SAVED HIS LIFE. I AM IN YOUR DEBT. 

La Leona thought she was a predator. La Leona would learn that kidnapping the bond-mate of the Alpha of Alphas had been a very, _very_ flawed decision.

StripeSide took the chalk.

LA LEONA ATTACKED MY PEOPLE. ANY ENEMY OF LA LEONA IS MY FRIEND.

He looked at her words, and the people behind him sang back and forth, and then HighClimber joined in, and LoudVoice. They were all singing at the same time, much too fast for any dinosaur to follow. They sounded excited, but their voices were all crashing together shrilly like demented birds. She held out the chalk to RoundAlpha, in the hope that he might write something coherent.

He raised the chalk, and wrote.   ANY ENEMY OF LA LEONA IS WELCOME IN SAN JUDAS TADEO. 

“Oh, that’s nice,” WingWatch said. “Isn’t that nice? That’s very nice.”

RoundAlpha held out the chalk, and StripeSide took it.

She almost crushed the chalk in the fever of her relief.

She was Alpha of Alphas, and he was an alpha of the humans. Alpha had met alpha, for the first time, ever. Dinosaur had spoken to human.

Everything she and FirstHuman had worked for was coming to fruition. Everything she had dreamed about was coming true. She had been working toward this moment, since that horrible day on the Island of Clouds, when she had realized that humans thought the Real People were only animals. Every goal she wanted for her Pack – to be free, to be the equals of humans, to speak, and be listened to… it was _all_ becoming real.

The chasm of seventy-one hundred hundred hundred years had been bridged.

She raised the chalk again.

WE CAN BE FRIENDS. 

* * *

 

Owen woke up with pain.

He was lying propped on his side, and his hand felt for the source of pain in his stomach, wanting to push it away. His fingers found stiff bandages, and touching the bandages hurt, and the hurt woke him up fully.

He opened his eyes.

He was lying on his side, on a mattress, in a real bed, with a saline drip taped into his forearm. The blanket over him was patterned with the familiar red MSF logo. He could see the inside of a mosquito net around him, and he could smell antiseptics, and citronella oil. He could hear the regular _shush-tick-shush-tick-shush-tick_ of a tired ceiling-fan.

A grey-blue ghost moved outside the mosquito-net. StripeSide’s head and neck rose up alongside his bed.

“Blue,” he said, and his voice was a dry crackle in his throat.

He was in a hospital, and StripeSide was standing at the side of his bed. He was dreaming; that was it. He was dreaming that he was in hospital, and of course he dreamed about velociraptors. Velociraptors appeared in his dreams, in the oddest places – his high school gym, long-haul flights, Sea World…

StripeSide ducked her head under the mosquito net. When she raised her head the white fabric fell in folds around her neck, like a bridal veil. She turned her head from side to side, looking him over critically.

He stayed where he was. His stomach hurt. His back hurt. Too much hurt for him to want to move, so he just looked at her. He hoped she would say something. She had a lovely voice in his dreams, a gorgeous contralto, but in this dream she was just looking at him.

“Blue,” he murmured. “Hey, girl.”

She bared her teeth and snarled. Her voice was her _real_ voice – a gravelly growl, as far from a contralto as you could get – and suddenly Owen was fully awake.

He _wasn’t_ dreaming. He was really here, and so was she.

“Oh, God. How did _you_ get here?”  

She turned her head, looking down at him quizzically.

“Shit, you can’t stay here, someone will see you!”

He tried to roll onto his back so that he could use both hands to sign at StripeSide, but pain ripped through his stomach as soon as he moved.

The memories swamped his brain, all at once. He’d been shot! He remembered struggling to swim, and clinging to StripeSide’s neck. He remembered lying on his back, looking up at her, and her frantic shrieks for help.   He remembered the arrival of Maria, Jorge and Maggie. He remembered being carried on a stretcher made from jackets strung along two poles, for what seemed like torturous years.  

StripeSide pulled her head up and warbled at him. She raised her forehands and signed, <Stay still! You have been sewn! You do not get up!>

“You don’t need to _tell_ me,” he grunted. He lay back again, gripping his stomach.

< Moving, not!> She turned her head, the mosquito-net hooking on her rough hide, and let out a loud warble of distress, aimed at the open door.

Owen heard the sound of shoes on the floor, and a moment later someone walked around the metal-and-linen screens around his bed.

Owen stiffened in fright. Whoever was coming in would see the velociraptor!

He gripped the bedclothes, but there was no scream of terror. Miraculously, the person on the other side of the mosquito net walked straight up to the bed. Miraculously, StripeSide side-stepped away. Her hide hooked on the net, dragging it with her.

The stranger walked to the side of the bed briskly, and pulled up the mosquito-net to hook it up out of the way. She had to tug it to get it off StripeSide’s rough hide, and to Owen’s amazement StripeSide reacted with only an annoyed jerk of her neck.  

With the net out of the way, Owen got his first good look at the person who had come in. She was slim and pale, with curly blonde hair. She wore a bright cloth wrapped around her forehead, and a stethoscope slung around her neck.

“Mr Grady,” she smiled down at Owen, not looking at StripeSide. “How do you feel?”

“Sore…” he said, surprised at being spoken to in English. “Who are you? Where am I?”

“My name is Doctor Claire Somersby.” Her accent was English, and educated. Her fingers wrapped around his wrist, feeling for his pulse.

“Where am I?”

“You are in the MSF clinic in San Judas Tadeo.”

“The _town_ of San Judas Tadeo?”

“Yes, the town of San Judas Tadeo,” she said.

“And,” he pointed to StripeSide, standing at the foot of the bed. “ _Her._ You can, um, _see_ her? You know what she is?”

“Everybody has seen her,” Dr Somersby said. She turned her head and looked at StripeSide, as if a velociraptor was not even _close_ to the scariest creature she’d ever seen in her ward. “And the others too.”

“The others?”

“You were brought here this afternoon, with nearly a dozen of them in attendance. They caused a bit of a stir in this little town of ours, as I’m sure you can imagine. This one has been watching you sleep all evening.”

“Er,” Owen stared at her. “All right.”

“You’re a very lucky man, Mr Grady…”

“Owen,” Owen corrected.

“Owen,” she said. “The bullet passed straight through you without puncturing any major blood vessels. You’ve lost a lot of blood, and you’re on quite a serious course of antibiotics, but you’re going to be just fine.”

“Don’t feel fine,” Owen grunted.

“Yes. That’s to be expected, I’m afraid. I am going to give you something for the pain now, so you’ll feel better in a moment.”

She turned to the bed-side table, and her hands were busy. A moment later she did something to the saline drip that Owen couldn’t quite see. StripeSide watched her through narrow eyes, a snarl rippling over her lips, but she said nothing.

“Can I roll over?” Owen asked, when she was finished with his drip.  

Dr Somersby helped him shift his weight, carefully padding the pillows around him so that he wasn’t leaning on the stitches on his back. He couldn’t help gritting his teeth, as the stitches tugged at him.

“My instruments are rather rudimentary,” Dr Somersby said, “but I’ve been told that your friend can see your temperature and blood pressure with the naked eye?”

“Oh, she can,” Owen said. “It’s like living with a walking, talking MRI.” _Told by who, exactly…?_

“Well, in that case, do please try to sleep. Your friend will call me if you need anything.”

“Yeah, she will,” Owen agreed.

“All’s well,” Somersby said. “Sleep now,” and she let down the mosquito-net around the bed again.

All was not well, Owen thought. As soon as Somersby was gone, he raised his hands.

<You should go,> he signed to her. <People will see you.>

StripeSide stuck her head under the net again so that she could get a closer look at him.

<People have seen me.>

<What of TravelsOverWater’s law?>

She cocked her head and blinked at him.

<I am Alpha of Alpha’s now, not TravelsOverWater,> she signed, and ended her phrasing with her middle finger pointed to the scabs on her throat. <There is a new law, now. My law.>

“What?” he blurted, aloud.

She’d been in a fight with another raptor? Raptors fought each other for the right to rule as alpha – the dominance battle he’d always known he could never win, back at Jurassic World. It must have been a desperately violent battle. He needed to see if she was injured.

He put both elbows under him, ready to push himself upright, but she squawked irritably.

<Moving, not!> Her teeth clacked with the imperative mood. <Sewing holds your wounds together! Ripping them open and bleeding again, not!>

He let himself down again. He wasn’t ready to sit up yet, anyway, he decided. He could feel something pulling unpleasantly at his skin – stitches or dressings he didn’t know – but the sensation was horrible, and made him feel instantly nauseous. He’d heard about what a bullet did to the human body – lovely phrases like ‘cavitation shockwaves’ and ‘tumbling rounds.’

He lay down on his back and raised his hands to sign. <You were going to wait before you challenged TravelsOverWater.>

<You forced me to move sooner than we planned.>

He felt like the most useless dyad in the world. He’d got himself into trouble, and needed to be rescued by a dinosaur, like a useless whimpering damsel in distress.

<I have ruined your plans.>

<TravelsOverWater would have left you with the war-party,> she signed. <That was not acceptable to me.>

<I got myself into trouble. You are here, and it is my fault.>

She narrowed her eyes and snarled. <Your fault is nothing. This is my story, not yours. You are the catalyst, not the protagonist. You are the hook, not the fish.>

She’d been listening to Lowery Cruthers too much, he thought.  

<You should go,> he signed.  

She pulled her head up, and stared at him. <Do you wish me to go?>

<No.>

< I fought TravelsOverWater to be here. I intend to stay here. You know the Great Project. But you do not have to stay with me. This is my story, not yours. You can go.>

<Clarify?>

<You desire to go back to your own people,> she said. <I can do nothing to change it. So go. Go back to your own people.>

<No. False.>

<Yes. You do. This I know. This I suspected. This I feared.>

“Hell, no!” he said aloud. <I do not wish to leave.>

<You will leave. You did leave. I will lose you. Your decision is made.>

<You do not understand.>

<You say that, because you desire to leave.>

He could see her panting slightly. There weren’t a hell of a lot of raptor facial expressions that humans could read, but he knew that panting was a sign of agitation. She was getting upset.

<I do not desire to leave, but I must. I cannot do as I desire!>

<Why not? Clarify!> She timbered – a deep rumbling groan.

<I cannot tell you. You do not understand.>

She whirled, dragging the net with her. It tore free of her hide before it could rip. She whirled around the head of his bed. Her tail swung around the room.

<Do not tell me I do not understand, and then not explain! Tell me what I have done wrong! Tell me why you desire to leave! Tell me why nothing I do will keep you here! I am StripeSide, but I am not good enough! Tell me why? Why?>

The last thing he needed right now was an angry velociraptor going ape in a hospital ward.

<You are good enough!> He sat up. Whatever the doc had given him was working, because he could sit up. <But I am not good enough for you. You deserve better than me.>

Whatever the doc had given him had worked too well, because he felt tears suddenly rise in the corners of his eyes, and before he could stop them, he was overwhelmed.

She warbled unhappily, and came back to the side of the bed. <You are leaking out of your eyes!>

He didn’t know the Raptor Sign for ‘crying.’ He’d never cried in front of her before.

<Leaking, not!> she ordered.

<Sorrow!> he signed, and pressed his hands to his face.

<Sorrow, not! No more!>

<I will tell you my sorrow, and I will lose you, but I will tell you.>

<Tell me! Leaking, not!> She phrased it as a command, but she was panting again in distress.

<You believe I am your bond-mate,> he signed. <But you did not choose me.>

<Yes, obvious statement is this. The human chooses, this is always true. This is the law of TravelsOverWater and this will be my law.>

<No!> He wiped his eyes again. <I did not choose you for my bond-mate. I knew not then that there were such things as bond-mates. When you hatched, I was the first Person you saw. You were very small, and you thought I was your parent.>

He didn’t know what the sign for ‘imprinting’ was. The whole business of eggs was hidden in mystery – usually only the four parents of a clutch got to see the eggs at all. He’d lived with La Patasola for a year, but he’d still never seen a raptor egg.

<You did not choose me,> he signed. <I raised you to be mine. You were mine, because I was your parent. Now you think you are still mine. I am not your bond-mate. You cannot court your own parent!>

She stood back, and stared at him, talons rigid. For a long moment she just stared at him, and then she sprang back into movement.

<You are stupid! Stupid! Stupid!>

<I told you that you would be angry, and now you are angry!>

< Comparable with EatsPlants, I say you are! Do you think I am still a hatchling? I am StripeSide! Alpha of Alphas! Destroyer of Helicopters! Slayer of the Mad Giant Person! I deserve the best! I chose the best! I chose a bond-mate who is strong, and intelligent, and speaks many languages! I did not have to choose you! I could have chosen ShinySmoothHead! I could have chosen WhiteCoat! I could have chosen BlackClothesAlpha! But no! I chose you! You! And you are as stupid as EatsPlants!>

He was beginning to lose track of her signing. She signed faster than he did – three fingers and all. He suspected that she thought faster than he did, too. He was just a dumb Squid with a training clicker, after all.

<Too fast!>

She didn’t bother replying. She screamed at him, her jaws spreading wide to a full diamond shape, showing all her jagged teeth.

There was a sudden clatter of shoes at the doorway, and Dr Somersby arrived at a run. “What’s going on?”

StripeSide whirled, and screamed at her too. Somersby flinched, crashing into a cupboard so that the medical supplies on top wobbled and fell off onto the floor.

“Blue!” Owen yelled. “Stand down!”

She twisted her head and screamed at him, without bothering to sign anything.

“Owen!” Somersby asked, gripping the cupboard.

“It’s all right!” Owen promised, holding out his hand to her. “It’s okay, they scream all the time! Nothing to worry about.  We’re all good here. _Blue!_ Eyes on me!”

He waited until her long head swivelled to face him, and signed, <You frighten her!>

<You frighten me!> StripeSide signed, hissing. <Moving, not! You are still sewn!>

“You tell her that if you pull out any of those stitches I’ll stab her with something she will not like!” Somersby snapped at Owen. “Dinosaurs in a hospital ward – _really!”_

He suddenly felt he was in a weird _ménage a trois_ – two furious females of different species were _both_ yelling at him about his stitches. “I’ll be fine.”

“You had better be fine.”

“I’ll be okay. Just trust me.”

“I’m not sure that I _should_ trust a man who runs about in the forest playing with dinosaurs!” she snipped at him. "Who do you think you _are_ \- Christopher Robin?"  

Somersby and StripeSide exchanged glares, and Somersby left the room.

StripeSide watched her leave, and then swung her head back to Owen.

Her rage had passed quickly, as outbursts of velociraptor emotion usually did. Now she looked tired.  

<This, then, has caused that,> she signed. <I court you, and you move away. Because you think that I chose you not.>

<You did not. You could not. I was your parent.>

<You are not my parent,> she signed, slowly. <All four of my parents died, seventy-one-hundred-hundred-hundred years ago. My egg was never laid. I was made by LetterW.LetterU on the Island of Clouds.>

<I raised you,> he said. He knotted his hands into fists, and then forced them to move again. <You did not choose me. You think you did, but you did not.>

<Do you think we do not _know_ that we hatchling-shadow-sticky to our parents? Do you think I do not remember hatchling-shadow-sticky, and know what it felt like, and know the difference now? >

<Hatchling-shadow-sticky.> That was a new sign for him, and he repeated it.  Raptor words seemed to be made by gluing descriptors together. Three different signs run into one made a whole new word, the same way that ‘blade-and-clatter’ together made up ‘helicopter.’

<I did not know that you knew,> he signed.

<I was right. My fears were true,> she signed, and her talons moved slowly. <I chose you, but you did not choose me. You came here out of habit. You think that I am a hatchling, and small, and helpless.  You think I am am still hatchling-shadow-sticky on you.>

Raptors were very short on facial expressions, but she looked sad. Her neck slumped low, as if her head was too heavy to bear upright.

<I chose to come here,> he said.  <I fought my kind for you. I fought the Crocodile for you.>

<You fought the Crocodile for the hatchling you think I was,> she signed.

 _Theory of mind_ … and where was Alan Grant when you wanted to wring his neck.

<You are sad,> he signed. < Do not be sad.>

<I am sad,> she replied.

<I do not want you to be sad,> he said.

<I am sad, because I am losing my bond-mate.>

<You are not losing me. We were both wrong. You are not hatchling-shadow-sticky, and I am not going to leave.>

She turned her long grey head away from the bed, neck held low.

<I am afraid. I am overcome! I think I shall attempt to leak from my eyes now…>

It didn’t work like that. _“Blue!”_ he said, to get her attention back.

<We were wrong!> he signed, when she turned to face him. <But we can make everything right! You are not hatchling-shadow-sticky, and that is good! We can be bond-mates, in truth. If you want me. If you will have me.>

<Truly?> She cocked her head.  

<I want you for my bond-mate.>

<Will you court me?>  

<Yes! Obvious statement. You are StripeSide, and I will court you the way the great StripeSide should be courted! I will give you gifts, and everyone will see that you are mine.>

<Flowers!> she signed sharply, picking her head up.  

<Flowers?>

<You must give me flowers. I desire flowers! I will be courted with flowers!>

Why did she want – _oh._ She wanted what her sister got from Lowery. So she _was_ capable of jealousy, after all! Well, he’d envied the bond between Lowery and WingWatch for a year. He was ready for _his_ share of raptor possessiveness.

<You will have every flower I ever pick,> he promised. <All flowers will be yours!>

Oh, she _liked_ that. She arched her neck and cocked her head, and he could almost see her preening in front of him. Vanity, thy name is velociraptor!

<If the human chooses, then I have chosen. You are mine, and I am yours. Now and forever. Whatever happens. We will do the Great Project together.>

<I will be yours and you will be mine,> she promised, <and no other will come between us. Everyone will know that the finest human is mine!>

<Yes, we will be bond-mates,> he agreed.

<Mine!>

He felt his emotions prickle in his eyes again, and before he could muster his defences again he was crying again.

She squawked. <Leaking, not! Why are you sad?>

<I am not sad! I am overcome. All my life is changing now.>

<All your life is changing for the better!> she said, earnestly. <Leaking, not!>

He couldn’t help it; he snorted a laugh. She seemed very worried by his ‘leaking.’

<Hold me,> he suggested.

<Will this stop your leaking?>

<Yes. Hold me.>

She came closer, and stood looking down at him. <Lie down,> she ordered.

That sounded like a good idea. He was tired; exhausted. Whatever was in the drip, he wanted to lie down and let it do its work. Sitting up was too much work, anyway, and he didn’t have the stamina to sit up for one more moment. He pushed himself down into the welcoming hug of his blanket, and lay on his back.

<Sleep!>

She leaned her head over his bed, supporting her weight on one forehand, and laid her long neck down over him, very gently. The weight of her head came down over his chest. Her snout rested on his breastbone.

He wrapped his arms around her head, feeling for the deep grouts between her scales. For only the second time, he was being cuddled by a velociraptor, and it felt like the most wonderful thing in the world.

Bond-mates, he thought. And he was not going to lose this, now. This was his, now.   He’d been so afraid that he was going to lose her, and now here she was, and she was his. She was his, officially, willingly, and in full knowledge of what that meant.

“Blue,” he said.

Her eyes blinked at him serenely. She was heavy, but he didn’t mind. Her weight was solid, and reassuring, and warm. She was exactly where she should be.

“That’s nice,” he breathed, with a sniff. “Don’t go anywhere.”

She could not sign to him, with her head on his chest, but he could almost hear her voice in his head, as if he was dreaming.   _Sleep…_

All was well with his world.

Nothing would ever be the same, and he knew it. StripeSide had changed her people’s world, as she swore she would. The raptors had come out from the rainforest, and they had been seen by outsiders. The impossible future was under way.

Nothing was ever going to be the same – but none of that mattered. Right now, nothing mattered but Blue. The world was changing, but in this room, under the ticking of the ceiling fan, there was only peace.

Owen’s pain was drifting away into sweetness, and his eyes were growing heavy.

He held his raptor’s head on his chest, and he slept.  

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This feels like the schmaltzyest thing I've ever written. ;)


	8. Epilogue

 

Owen made it as far as the bench outside the hospital’s front door.

He sat down. His stomach hurt, worse than he’d thought it would when he’d got out of bed. Halfway here he’d felt his strength failing, as if he’d abruptly run out of Gummi Berry Juice. He didn’t think he could make it back on his own – but hey, he didn’t have to. StripeSide or Somersby would notice that he’d escaped and gone outside, and he would be dragged inside again.

The town square was quiet. It was mid-afternoon: raptor siesta time, and most of the townspeople were either eating or sleeping. Owen had something more important to do.

He reached into the basket for the first flowers, and started twisting them carefully in his fingers.  

It had been an interesting couple of days, he thought.

The people of San Judas Tadeo were getting used to the raptors, and the raptors were getting used to them. Even from his bed, Owen had spent most of the last few days translating between humans and raptors. There were things that the raptors had never seen before – electricity, and furniture, and the concept of privacy in the bathroom. There were things that the people had never seen before – the constant roaring and screaming, the static on their radios, the absolute and total prohibition on the pulling of tails.

The two species were getting to know each other, warily, but already they were finding reasons to like each other.

The raptors had spotted a land-mine, and offered to sweep around the town for more. The offer was received with joy. The raptors could spot land-mines as easily as if they’d been painted, and they were clearing the fields and roads around San Judas Tadeo far faster than a team of humans could.

TravelsOverWater and Maria had already left, leading TravelsOverWater’s pack back to the forest. Maria had said her goodbyes with her usual stoicism, but Owen had known they would probably never see each other again.

WingWatch had gone too, back to her eggs, back to Lowery. She had promised to send Barry back to Owen.

Most importantly, the Gomez cartel had not been seen in San Judas Tadeo. The Lioness, and her brother the Jaguar, had terrorised the people of San Judas Tadeo for long enough. San Judas Tadeo would shelter the raptors; the raptors would protect San Judas Tadeo. Symbiosis – _awesome._

Owen looked up at the sound of footsteps. Maggie stepped up onto the porch and walked over to him.

“Don’t tell anyone, but I escaped from medical supervision,” Owen explained, tapping one finger on the side of his nose.

“What are you doing?” she asked. She sat down on the bench and leaned back, looking out at the town square of San Judas Tadeo.

“Braiding a daisy-chain. I got some of the kids to pick them for me.”

“Those aren’t daisies.”

“It doesn’t matter what they are, as long as they fit around StripeSide’s neck,” he said.

He picked up the next flower and tried to incorporate it into his braid, but suddenly he had too many strands, and too few fingers, and the braid came apart in his hands – again.

“Aaa- _aaa-_ aaa!”

“Doesn’t look like you’re getting far, Tarzan,” Maggie observed.

“Nope, nope! I got this. Just going to take practice, that’s all.”

He knew he would get lots of practice. As soon as StripeSide saw what he was doing, she would want more. Lowery Cruthers gave flowers to WingWatch – well, _he_ was going to one-up Lowery Cruthers.

Maggie was sitting back, looking out at the town square.

The trees in the middle of the square cast excellent shade. It had been colonised by the raptors as the best place to sleep through the hottest part of the day. All around the square were sleeping dinosaurs – the whole palette of raptor colours. He could see stripes, spots, brindles and marbles; yellow, green, brown, grey, and dun, and snow-white.

Copper and Ash were sleeping nose-to-nose, like matching book-ends. Their hides turned white in sleep, making them glow brightly against the roots of the tree.   StripeSide was lying on the steps of the town’s only church.

“Amazing,” Maggie said, looking at the raptors. “If you told me about it, I wouldn’t have believed you.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Owen said. He couldn’t help the smile leaking out, as he looked at StripeSide. “They’re pretty awesome. The first time I saw them all together, I couldn’t stop staring. _Wow._ Look at _that._ Dinosaurs!”

"What would Alan Grant say, if he could see what we're seeing right now?"

"He'd probably cough up another book on the spot," Owen said. 

"He probably would!  So would anyone!  You know what you’ve built here, don’t you?”

“I didn’t build anything,” Owen said. “This is _all_ them.”

“We’re not the only intelligent species on the planet any more!” Maggie said. “Artificial intelligence! Biological Singularity! The scientists at InGen went and built intelligent life in a test-tube!”

Owen’s daisy chain came apart in his fingers again and he sighed.   He just didn’t have daisy-chain patience right now. He let the flowers fall back into the basket.

“InGen might have brought them back from extinction,” he said, “but they didn’t design them. They’re found a dozen different raptor gene samples – they’ve been able to cross-reference. They didn’t hit on that intelligence by accident. Your mate Alan Grant was right. The raptors really _were_ that smart. They were _us,_ 71 million years ago. And now they’re back, and they want to rebuild their world.”

 _“Their_ world?”

“Hey, they were here first. It was their world before it was ours. In a way, it’s _still_ theirs. If they were the intelligent species of this planet, 71 million years ago, then they’ve a right to share this world. They have an equal right to live here.”

“Well, of course they do,” Maggie said.

Owen looked up at the sound of snarling. SilverNose and StripeSide were having what passed for a quiet chat in raptor society. StripeSide leaped up and lashed out her killing-claws at SilverNose, who sprang away. They hunched low, and snarled into each other’s teeth.

“Are they fighting?” Maggie asked.

“Nope. That’s just how they talk to each other. It looks like a fight, because our body language is so different.”

“They look very aggressive.”

“Trust me, when they do get aggro with each other, it’s over so fast, you need a slow-mo camera to see where all the blood came from. They usually take huge pains not to hurt us. They know they’re stronger than we are. They know we’re fragile.”

“I’ve _seen_ them get aggro,” Maggie said.

“Yeah, I guess you have.”

“They _weren’t_ taking care not to hurt Pedro’s men.”

Owen sighed. “And that’s the problem. They’re carnivores. Everyone _knows_ raptors have eaten people. People have been reading Grant’s book for twenty years. People _already_ think they’re the most vicious dinosaurs ever.”

“They’re intelligent,” Maggie said. _“_ They're dangerous, because they're intelligent. Even Grant said so.”

“But that’s the problem. _Is_ a species of intelligent carnivores going to be _allowed_ to live here? Will people accept them? If people see them as a threat – if they’re invasive aliens from the past – then they’ll be wiped out.”

“They can’t just wipe out a whole species,” Maggie said. “Not if they see what I can see, right here.”  

“They _can_ just,” Owen said, sombrely. “They’re already extinct. Extinct animals have no rights. You can do what you want with them.”

That was why Jurassic World didn’t need to abide by any animal welfare laws, if they didn’t want to. Extinct animals had _none_ of the legal protections extant ones did. CITES didn’t cover them. Animal welfare laws didn’t cover them. The raptors could all be wiped out with no legal consequences at all. _Thank you, Lewis Dodgson - you prick._

“And that’s why you smashed the TV camera,” Maggie said. “And that’s why Claire Dearing lied to us. She knows, doesn’t she?”

“She knows, all right. And that, in a nutshell, is why we’ve been trying to hide them so long. No-one was supposed to know the raptors were here.  At least, not for at least another ten years.”

“Sorry, Owen, that ship’s sailed. Even if I keep quiet, everyone in town has been taking pictures. And Pedro and Julian got away. Even if the whole town keeps quiet, La Leona won’t. It won’t take long for the news to leak out.”  

Owen sighed, and looked out at the square in front of him.

“There have only been two intelligent species on this planet,” he said, grimly. “And we can’t lose one of them. _I_ can’t lose them. No matter what the cost.”  

“We won’t lose them.” She stood up, sharply. “I need to make a few phone calls. If anyone can undo Alan Grant’s book, I can. I’m going to call a couple of guys I know…”

Owen’s attention was taken by the rumble of a car engine, breaking the quiet of the sleeping town. The car appeared between cinderblock walls, heading for the square.

“Oh, my God, that’s my Jeep!” Maggie jumped up and leaped to the edge of the porch. “Yes! That’s _my_ bloody Jeep! Can you _believe_ these guys?”

The jeep slowed, and came to a stop just where the road opened out between crumbling cinderblock houses into the square.

The raptors under the tree were waking up and staring. They’d seen cars come and go, over the last two days, but this one was just sitting there, idling.

The passenger door opened, and Pedro got out. He stood next to the open door, and stared around him.

Even from a distance, Owen could see the expression of befuddled horror dawning on his face.

Dinosaurs! Dinosaurs, everywhere! The same horrifying monsters that had butchered his men – and they were lying under the biggest tree in San Judas Tadeo, as if they owned the place.

Pedro stared, and the raptors stared, and StripeSide raised her head. She set her forehands under her, and got up, slowly. She began to stalk across the square, head low, neck stiff, eyes fixed unblinking on Pedro.

A silent staring raptor was a raptor getting ready to eat you… That wasn’t good. Owen and the rest of La Patasola had spent the last few days trying to convince the people of San Judas Tadeo that the raptors were not dangerous. Killing a man in the middle of the town’s main square would undo all that goodwill in a couple of seconds.  

Owen got up, and moved to the edge of the porch, holding onto the post for support. He inhaled, to shout Blue’s name, and command her to Stand Down, but his words weren’t needed.

Opposite the hospital was the cantina/restaurant, where Owen had met Rodrigo. The front door popped open with a bang.

The bartender sprang out onto his doorstep, as if he’d run to the door. He stood on his own doorstep and yelled at Pedro.

“Yes, you see what you see!” he howled at the top of his lungs, waving his hands at the raptors.

Even StripeSide pulled up short, her slow stalk interrupted by surprise at the crazy human’s outburst.

“Dinosaurs! See them! They live here now! So go away! Leave this place!”

Pedro just turned the sunglasses toward the bartender, and said nothing.

“La Leona doesn’t own this town any more! We aren’t frightened of you any more! This is the last time you will come here – to burn our houses, kill our livestock, rape our sisters! So leave this place! Get out of here! The Gomez cartel has no more power here!”

Pedro reached back into the Jeep’s open door. His arm came out with a rifle.

StripeSide barked, once.

Every raptor was on their feet instantly, and staring at Pedro.

“Pedro!” Owen yelled from his post outside the hospital. “I would leave right now, if I were you!”

Pedro looked at Owen, looked at the bartender, and then his eye was caught by another door opening.

Beyond the cantina was the barbershop – beyond that was the post office. Doors were opening, and men were coming out. More men were coming around the corner of the church. The cantina’s customers were coming out behind the bartender, forming up behind him. Doors were opening, all around the square.

The people of San Judas Tadeo were coming out. They were holding an assortment of battered weapons – pangas and pitchforks and crowbars – and they were making an ominous growling noise. It was a deep hum, a growl of angry intention.  

It was a mob.

Pedro looked at the mob on his one side, and at the raptors on his other side, and thought better of the odds. He had a rifle. The townspeople had velociraptors. He jumped back into the Jeep, and the door clunked shut. The Jeep lurched forward, and the driver pulled it around in a rapid spinning turn over the sand. It accelerated out of the town in a cloud of dust.

StripeSide barked, and the Jeep had an escort of raptors, running on either side of it. The raptors chased it to the edge of the square, and the engine screamed as the driver accelerated, as fast as it could go.

“Yahhhh!” the bar-tender yelled, leaping up and down and waving his hands at the departing Jeep. “Yes! Go! Go!”

“Yes! Go, and don’t come back!”

He wasn’t the only one yelling. People were streaming out of the houses. Siesta was over. Owen recognised the school-teachers, and the local priest, and the green-grocer. Somersby and her nurses came out of the hospital, and were immediately swept up in the celebrations.  They were all jumping and cheering. The raptors trotted back, curious, and were surprised to find themselves included in the spontaneous party. 

“There!” the Mayor yelled at Owen, gleefully. “Did you see that! Did you see him go! That man is evil! That man burned down our old hospital! He killed our police captain – and he took one look at your friends, and he left! He’s gone!”

“Yeah, I saw it,” Owen said, grinning.

The Mayor jumped up to the porch and threw his arms around Owen’s shoulders. There were tears in his eyes, Owen realized. “No more Gomez cartel! No more fear! This is a wonderful day! Tell the dinosaurs they are all wonderful! Tell them all, they are all wonderful!”

“I’ll tell them.”

The Mayor didn’t stay to see Owen translate. He jumped off the porch and dived into the crowd. Owen saw him grabbing the waitresses of the cantina and dancing spontaneously with them.

“They’re gone, they’re gone! They’re gone! No more Gomez! Die, Gomez, die!”

StripeSide was standing on the church steps, surveying the celebrating crowds. She turned her long head and looked at Owen.

<They seem happy.> StripeSide signed with large slow movements, so that he could read it at a distance.  <The enemy of our enemy is our friend!>

 Owen signed back. <I think we are among friends here.  They like you as much as you like them.>

<You, humans, wonderful creatures!  The Great Project cannot be done alone. But with humans like these, all things can be done! Wonderful creatures!  What TravelsOverWater and Maria have done, what you and I have done, we will all do! We belong together!>

She screamed like a train crash, and whirled away to squabble and kick at SilverNose.

Owen turned, and found Maggie looking at him.

“Raptors in the rainforest,” she said, cryptically.

He shrugged his shoulders, grinning. “Like Grant said in his book," he said.  "Dinosaurs and man thrown back into the mix together - How can we _possibly_ have the slightest idea what to expect?”

"Life finds a way," she said.  _"Intelligent_ life finds allies." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it, for now! I want to make this into a trilogy. I have an idea where I want this to go, but I've nothing concrete yet, so if anyone has anything they want to see happen, comment, and I'll see what I can do!
> 
> Edit:   
> Thank you all so much for the feedback! I'm busy working on the next part of the series, and I'm going to incorporate as many of the comments and suggestions as I can. Watch this space: the raptors' journey is not finished yet!


End file.
